LEE BENSON

Aaron Lee Benson is an Associate 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 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.

Benson’s early work dealt strictly with architecture and architectural forms. He was 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?

There are many correlations between his early architectural work and his latest work dealing with martyrs. He finds in the lives of these martyrs a perfection of form and beauty. Their lives have a strength of character that is monumental and ordered, completely removed from their literal physical size. There is also a two-fold beauty that relates to the above statement. Each of their spiritual lives leads to a framing of an outward life of extraordinary beauty and refinement.

Benson has experienced a unique difference between the creative process of his early works and his present work. 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 attuned to the spiritual nature of life, and this affects his creative process.

It is his intent to combine the human 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 effort 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 and lintel. It can be said that where he breaks from tradition is in taking three traditional elements of art (the figure, the relief narrative and architecture) and combining them into one work. Where tradition placed the figure into architectural spaces Benson has sculpted them as 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. Benson chose to incorporate the narrative directly upon the form/figure as a means of widening the aesthetic interest of his work. Benson’s ultimate goal is to transcend the physical stature of individuals in order to display the metaphysical nature of their lives.