Jesse Aaron

Jesse James Aaron (June 10, 1887 – October 17, 1979) was an American sculptor and wood carver. His work is held in the permanent collections of several museums including the High Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

Early life Jesse Aaron was born on June 10, 1887, in Lake City, Florida and was born into a mixed race family descending from a Seminole grandmother and parents of African and European descent. He was the oldest of twelve children. His formal education ended in the first grade when his parents removed him from school to hire him out as a farm-laborer for seven dollars per month. He continued sporadic agricultural labor until 1908 when he attended a technical college for his baking certification. From that point onwards, Aaron began working as a cook for the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad system, operated several bake shops, cooked for Hotel Thomas in Gainesville, Florida, and then for various hospitals and fraternities later in his career. In 1968, after selling his farm to fund his wife's cataract operation, Aaron still did not have enough money to fully fund her surgery. As he recounted, at three o'clock in the morning on July 5, Aaron awoke to the voice of God commanding him to carve wood. This inspiration offered solutions both to Lee Anna's desperate need for surgery and Aaron's unemployment after losing his nursery. Thus, at 81 years old, Aaron began a new career as a sculptor. Aaron would walk the swamp and forest to collect pieces of wood in which "he could bring forth human and animal shapes that, to him if not to anyone else, already existed." He described his process by saying "I can see faces on anything. I can look at a tree stump and I know just how is gonna look 'fore I start, it all depends on what God has put there in the wood." He created his iconic, large, aghast, yellow eyes from polyester resin. He also attached found objects, bones, old pipes, rusted guns, and hats to his pieces to further animate them.

Aaron suffered from arthritis. He died on October 17, 1979, in Alachua, Florida, and Lee Anna died on December 25, 1985.

Exhibitions Wood Sculpture by Jesse J. Aaron. 14 Oct - 3 Nov, 1970, University of Florida, College of Architecture and Fine Arts, Gainesville, FL. Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980. 15 Jan- 28 Mar, 1982, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington (D.C.) Outside the Main Stream: Folk Art in Our Time, May- Aug 1988, High Museum of Art at Georgia-Pacific Center, Atlanta, GA. Unsigned, Unsung.. Whereabouts Unknown!: Make-Do Art of the American Outlands. 5 Feb- 7 Mar, 1993, Florida State University Art Gallery and Museum, Tallahassee, FL. Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present, 23 Oct 1993- 30 Jan 1994, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA. Southern Spirit: The Hill Collection, 21 Feb- 31 Mar, 2000, Museum of Art, Tallahassee, FL. The Sculpture of Jesse Aaron. 9 Sep- 4 Nov 2000, Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts, Eatonville, FL. A Return to January '82: The Corcoran Show Revisited, 22 Jan- 16 Mar, 2002, Luise Ross Gallery, New York, NY. Southern Folk: Self-Taught Artists, 15 Nov, 2002- 5 Jan, 2003, Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, Ormond Beach, FL. Coming Home: Self-Taught Artists, the Bible and the American South. 19 Jun- 13 Nov, 2004, Art Museum of the University of Memphis, Memphis, TN. Stories of Community: Self-Taught Art from the Hill Collection. 12 Aug- 30 Oct, 2004, Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA. Amazing Grace: Self-Taught Artists from the Mullis Collection. 29 Sep, 2007- 6 Jan, 2008, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA. Confluence / Tree of Life. 27 May- 20 Sep 2016, Galleries at the Historic Thomas Center, Gainesville, FL. Cosmologies from the Tree of Life: Art from the African American South, 8 Jun- 17 Nov 2019, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA. In the Presence of Our Ancestors: Southern Perspectives in African American Art. December 12, 2020 to December 5, 2021. Minneapolis Institute of Art. Minneapolis, MN.

Collections Harn Museum of Art High Museum of Art Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Minneapolis Institute of Art Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Smithsonian American Art Museum