Bio/Résumé

Aaron Lee Benson is a Professor of Fine Arts in Sculpture and Ceramics at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. He works mainly in clay producing large-scale architectural forms as well as figurative, narrative monoliths. He received a BFA, BS in Art Education and his MFA in Sculpture/Ceramics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is married to Elizabeth Jane Brown Benson and they have four children, Aaron Tennessee, Mary Elizabeth, Zachariah Chyanne, and Sarah Blessing. They make their home in Jackson, TN where Lee maintains two studios. His work is widely shown throughout the south and northeast, including The Louise Jones Brown Gallery, Duke University, The Gallery in New York, University of Arkansas, and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He has won several public works commissions including works for the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, The State of Alabama and the city of Rome, GA.

Aaron's early work dealt strictly with architecture and architectural forms. He was very much enamored with the perfection and beauty of the Classical Greek and Roman sense of monumentality and order. He found a divine beauty not only in the architecture, but also in the negative space framed by that architecture. This made him realize the extent of the sensitivity needed to accomplish such a feat so that all forms, positive and negative, were pleasing to the viewer. He was also spiritually drawn to the Great Cathedrals of Western Europe. To imagine that man could build a structure that actually contained the ability to evoke reverence and spiritual wonder was a powerful revelation to him as an artist. If it had been done in the past, it could certainly be done again. In that lies the foundation of all that he does. Can his work move mankind to that level of spiritual and reverent sensibility?

Aaron has experienced a unique difference in the creative process of the early works and in the work he is doing now. As he works on an individual martyr he becomes more and more aware of their life. He dwells on pictures of them and reads over and over parts of their story. As he builds and models the clay he becomes somewhat entranced by his thoughts of their sacrifice. It is often very intense and introspective. He tends to become much more attune to the spiritual nature of life and this affects his creative process.

It is his intent to combine the figure with architecture and narrative. The architecture is generally straight forward as he constructs modules and designs them into a pleasing compositional form. In this he draws a great deal from historical tradition in his use of the "golden mean" or "divine proportion" as well as traditional architectural elements like the arch and the post lintel. It can be said that where he breaks from tradition is in taking three traditional forms of art, the figure, the relief narrative, and architecture and combining them into one work. Where tradition placed the figure into architectural spaces, Aaron has sculpted them one and the same. The same holds true for his relief narratives. Traditional narrative took place on the canvas or the relief panel and often used landscape and figures to construct the story. Aaron chose to incorporate the narrative directly upon the form/figure as a means of widening the aesthetic interest of his work. Aaron's ultimate goal is to transcend the physical stature of individuals in order to display the metaphysical nature of their lives. In his latest body of work, sculptor Aaron Lee Benson has moved back into as exploration of the aesthetic power of pure form reminiscent of much of his work from the late 1980s into the early 90s. He is now working in highly textured, organic sense of form that finds its origins in nature. His travels to the southwestern United States in the late 70s and three other visits in the last five years has re-awakened in him a new devotion to the towering landscape formations found in the deserts and higher elevations of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. He and his family are avid hikers and climbers and spend many weeks each summer camping and packing all around the world. Their month long backpacking trips to many of the mountainous regions of the world including the upper Midwest of the U.S. and the Alps of western and central Europe can also be seen to have influenced his work. His new forms are taking on a strong natural quality that echoes many of these landscapes. His exploration of form that has always dominated his work now takes on a surface characteristic that is fresh and visually powerful. His combining of forms with the human figure is not new to his work but his renewed interest in surface quality enhances the viewers experience with both these new forms and the figure.