First published: Winter 2024/2025
For Jesse Aaron, the trees of his Florida homeland were his muses, resulting in carved sculptures that possess an uncanny sense of being and individuality
As much as the divine calling to become a sculptor that he experienced one morning in 1968, Jesse Aaron was guided by the wood itself. Responding to the knotty whorls, knobs from snapped branches, and grain of oak, cedar and cypress that he found in the area around his home in Gainesville, Florida, he claimed to only bring out a presence that was already there. Faces appear to grow out of weathered trunks; dogs, birds and even a shark seem to have come to life out of roughly hewn logs. “God put the faces in the wood,” he once stated. “Don’t bring me a piece of wood and ask me to carve something out of it. ‘Cause I won't. Don’t tell me what you want, it might not be there, you understand?”
Aaron in 1976; photo: Peggy A Bulger; State Library and Archives of Florida
By ALLISON C MEIER
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision 121.
