Lisa Benham
Fine Art and Mixed Media Artist
2024-2025 Artist In Residence
Essay
My typical creative process begins as a slowly winding and open-ended path. I feel into which of any, and often several, media approaches feel most like they would lend themselves to effectively reflecting my observations, conceptions, and sensations for the topic at hand.
There are (at very least) two obvious themes calling to be played with, in the grand context of Pando: its colors and textures, and its unique one-ness.
As visually delicious as all aspens are, the most specific mental grok for Pando is settling into the understanding that the “forest” one is walking through is really a single distinct organism of epic age and proportion. This reality is as challenging to comprehend as it is delightful and awe-inspiring to reach into. It feels important to explore this clonal spread through depictions of roots in a few different ways, across a few of my finished works and studies.
The four-framed threadpainting series, Seasons of Pando, visually flows one to another, intended to be hung edge to edge as a continuum of a single four-canvas work (or quadriptych) one season blending into the next. Visually as literally, each panel also depicts a single shared root system. The full changing spectrum of seasonal foliage flows above ground. Below, there is a long subterranean complex of soil, rocks and brightly “conductive” roots in colored wire, connecting the whole series, breaching across the frame edges themselves.
Canopy Details of Pando Threadpaintings
I frequently enjoy pulling edges and “formal” frames into the mix in my work, by extending the subject matter onto and across these conventional edges. Given Pando’s own illusion of typical-seeming arboreal separatenesses (to the uninformed eye), this bridging treatment of traditional siloing frames feels particularly apt while depicting Pando.
All the fabrics used across these pieces are recycled/reused scraps from previous project lives, not unlike the absolute reuse cycles of any forest. Here, the cycle has continued to perform and nourish the same single organism over millennia.
Perhaps the less conceptual and more directly visceral experiences that Pando offers might be shared by other healthy aspens, but being amidst these phenomena always grabs the senses.
That mystical white(ish) bark spirals upward, with eyes that look back at the observer far more directly than most flora. With slower, closer time in the tree, this captivating bark reveals a complex range of colors and textures, depending on age, health, location.
Pando in Crochet
In my work Pando in Crotchet I explored these subtle differences in the tree’s colors, textures and ranges of shadow by using half a dozen colors of yarn. The darkest colors render surfaces of rounding shadows, and the tree’s de-branching (eyes), aging and scarring processes. Rather than foliage, Pando in Crotchet focuses solely on a trunk, its bark, and the tree’s clonal genetic growth structure, including roots and a representative young sapling, one growing off to each side.
With the same fondness, I experimented with several paper-paste monoprint studies. Repeated attempts resulted in an organic collection of renderings of the bark’s off-white spectra, as well as stronger textures of truck scars and eyes. In one of the two final “trunk” stackings, I used recycled packaging material as the foundation, as I thought its horizontal texture suggested an interesting field as aspen bark.
Comparative Axes of Time and Space
The “quaking” leaves of any aspen provides a distinctive visual and aural bath. The fluttering motion is by-design, augmenting hinging movements in the slightest of breezes, allowing the sun to penetrate the canopy down to the ground throughout the quick high altitude growing season. The leaf colors range brilliantly throughout their relatively short seasonal growth and shedding cycles, and depicting this spectrum felt central. It was an added fascination to learn how to read and distinguish the edges of the Pando tree itself from its nearest neighbors by observations of differing leaf growth, in timing and color, especially in the growth windows of early spring, and the glowing shows of autumn.
Threadpainting of Pando In Four Seasons (All Four Works)
The “quaking” leaves of any aspen provides a distinctive visual and aural bath. The fluttering motion is by-design, augmenting hinging movements in the slightest of breezes, allowing the sun to penetrate the canopy down to the ground throughout the quick high altitude growing season. The leaf colors range brilliantly throughout their relatively short seasonal growth and shedding cycles, and depicting this spectrum felt central. It was an added fascination to learn how to read and distinguish the edges of the Pando tree itself from its nearest neighbors by observations of differing leaf growth, in timing and color, especially in the growth windows of early spring, and the glowing shows of autumn.
My Four Seasons of Pando thread paintings travel through these color differentials, moving as one axis of time, across one full year. They are snapshots of winter, spring, summer and fall, whereas below the roots blend more homogeneously from one end to the other through all four frames, appearing as one. This second traversing axis reminds and represents a wholly different scale, of both time and of area, in contiguous acres, mass, and millennia.
It is difficult not to feel changed, especially in relationship, when one comes to “the end” of a creative residency of this sort. I had the good fortune to learn about, seek out info, and visit Pando a few years before my residency here. Pando’s unique essence likely had an impact on me well before my first stroll, photographic series, and trunk hug at the tree. That said, my accumulated time spent and familiarity with Pando through each season inevitably deepened my sense of belonging/becoming, a sense of intimacy, and a felt “sense of place.” My graduate work in Environmental Studies gave me not just the scientific systems that scaffold my understanding and appreciation. It also led me deep into the soulful realms and mysteries of exploring exactly this kind kinship within nature as a whole, and places in particular. There remains a humble curiosity and deep reverence to the importance of this softening co-belonging. It is easy to feel, and to know, far more difficult to articulate in a way that does it justice. I guess that’s why there is so much art to be done and shared here. I know I will drop in like meeting an old friend each time I return to Pando.
Meet Artist in Residence Lisa Benham
Artist Statement
My endless curiosities carve diverging and reconverging paths which continue to defy simple categorization. Landscape painter? Fiber artist? Illustrator? Photographer? Assemblage and metal sculptor? I enjoy learning traditional foundations, soon to watch myself run amok, blending disciplines and breaking boundaries, often including those literal edges of the art pieces themselves.
The natural world remains an endless source of wonder and wellbeing for me, and I feel almost remiss when not lending at least some creative eye or homage, daily, to nature’s endless treasures. My professional time as an outdoor guide along with my environmental academic background further enhance the dizzying fractal depths and simultaneous simplicities with which nature presents itself, everywhere. I humbly try to capture what too often feels inexpressible, as I build small, fleeting artifacts — love totems to what I see, feel, and wonder upon.
During my gracious Artist in Residency four seasons within Pando, I look forward to looking, listening to and following this Largest Tree’s lead, to humbly share whatever emerges, in full homage. Meanwhile, I have been learning and experimenting with yet more new techniques to see how well they might communicate “aspen bark,” and contemplating how to combine them with my other approaches.
Bio
Now settled in Zion Canyon, Utah, Lisa Benham was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning a BFA (Painting and Drawing concentration) along a with minor degrees in music and psychology. Before and after graduation, Lisa worked in several therapeutic recreation contexts, specializing in differently abled populations. Her roles ranged widely, from guiding various adaptive outdoor experiences to studio art instruction.
After raising a family and expanding her creative edges to work primarily as a digital artist in Silicon Valley for almost two decades, she returned to formal education, earning an MS degree in Environmental Studies, a certificate in GIS (think deep play with maps), and a certificate in Buddhist chaplaincy. Always seeming to meld her areas of interest in unexpected ways, she combined much of the above while working as a paid “eco-chaplain,” teaching meditation, mindfulness, and ecological literacy in both San Quentin State Prison and Elmwood, the Santa Clara County Jail, before moving to Springdale, Utah in beautiful Zion Canyon in autumn of 2015.
With her recent and deepening return to the fine arts, she continues to reside and creatively thrive in this amazing canyon community, along with her amazing wife and two cats. Their co-founding and proprietorship of 2 Cranes Inn-Zion in neighboring Rockville provides yet another avenue where she can broadly share her love of place through creative offerings.
Friends of Pando is dedicated and working to educate the public, support research and preservation efforts and inspire stewardship of Pando, the world’s largest tree.
Friends of Pando is a proud partner of Pando’s public land stewards, Fishlake National Forest of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. Learn more about our partnership.
Friends of Pando and its partners are equal opportunity employers.
Just $14 a month supports work to ensure Pando can be enjoyed for generations to come. Make a one-time or, recurring tax deductible donation today.
Friends of Pando
PO Box 12
Richfield, UT, 84701
Phone: 435-633-1893
IRS EIN: 87-3958681
