"Balanced and Unbalanced Beam"
Fletcher Benton

UNIVERSITY GENERAL SCULPTURE COLLECTION

Benton's work entails both a painter's capacity to "see" and a sculptor's capacity to function in three-dimension. Benton creates his work in paper first, then in metal, still in miniature. He will test it sometimes for weeks to see if it "works," then give it to his studio assistants to be fabricated in larger scale. When he is fully pleased with the capacity of the work to "hold" in three-dimensional space, Benton then adds color, which, for him, is a fillip, a nicety, since the work is in no way dependent upon its final color for its strength or substance. Often architectonic in scale, The "Balanced / Unbalanced" works but Fletcher Benton are powerful and complex.