Rina Benz

Rina Benz is a self-taught artist, living in the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa.
She creates pastiched sculptures from polymer clay, recyclables and Paverpol (a fabric hardener), combining different styles, mediums and ideas.
Rina has always been an artist, doing drama and dance at school, obtaining a BA in Drama at the university of Stellenbosch, teaching drama and dance (from Ballroom-and-Latin American to hiphop), moving on to painting murals at home, making invitations and decor for events and later sculpting with cakes and modelling chocolate.
A dragon cake and its story led to a change in medium for Rina in 2018.
In the search for a more permanent medium than edibles, she found
Polymer clay and Paverpol and has not looked back since.
She is an active member of SASA (the South African Society of Artists) and her work can often be seen at the society’s exhibitions at Kirstenbosch.
The question is always why an artist does what an artist does, and her answer:
‘I can’t help myself. There is an undeniable call in my soul to create. It brings me incredible joy, to bring beauty, fantasy and imagination into the world, bringing my own thoughts on the meaning of life and the world into being and it is my own form of therapy.’
She finds inspiration in everything, the people who cross her path, relationships, special moments, nature, Africa, art, news, events, random thoughts, stories, history, books… basically life and its abundant layers!
Rina works from home where the ‘braai-room’ is often filled with art-in-creation, spilling out of her small studio.
Creating her sculptures is an extension of who she is and her love for ‘the journey’