The Myth of Persephone

The Myth of Persephone brings together artwork by Jennifer Bechak, Randie Snow, and Carolyn Wenning, three Pittsburgh artists that reassemble familiar materials to examine whether passage through loss can transform vulnerability into agency.

Developed through a year of regular conversations about artwork in progress, the exhibition grew from the artists’ collective examination of Persephone’s capture by Hades, Demeter’s grief and search for her daughter, and Persephone’s eventual emergence from the Underworld as a queen. Each artist interprets the myth through her own visual language while returning to its tensions between vulnerability and power, absence and return, darkness and light.

Jennifer Bechak gives transformation physical form: vines emerge from an anatomical heart in Evolving Growth, while Persephone’s Beehive turns an enclosed structure into a source of light. Randie Snow’s found-object assemblages, like In My Dream of Flying, place female figures among cages, roses, branches, and gilded leaves, considering the stillness of Persephone’s descent and the possibility of moving forward changed. In works like Rise and Won’t You Come Back to Me, Carolyn Wenning combines painting, collage, assemblage, photography, and natural specimens to trace the myth’s movement from capture and grief toward Persephone’s return as queen.

Through these multiple forms, familiar images and materials are recontextualized. Hearts take root, enclosed spaces begin to glow, and remnants of the natural world become signs of regeneration. Together, the artwork featured in The Myth of Persephone approach Persephone as not only an ancient figure but also an enduring symbol of change: someone who descends into darkness and emerges transformed, carrying that experience into the life that follows.