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CONCEPT is KING for Boise Artist
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Benjamin Victor finds the “why” in his nationally recognized sculptures
BY JODIE NICOTRA
When faced with the news of a surprise pregnancy, your average college student probably wouldn’t turn to a major in art as a financially stable career direction. And most parents wouldn’t support it. But Boise-based sculptor Benjamin Victor and his family don’t think like most people.
Victor had been doing a lot of artwork on his own, but was skeptical about art as a major. So he called his dad, a teacher and a coach who lived by famous UCLA basketball coach John Wooden’s definition of success as dictated by intrinsic, not extrinsic, factors.
“My dad said, ‘Do what you love. And even if you never make a dime at it, you’ll be a success,’” Victor said. “And so that advice from my dad pushed me to choose art, because I was actually the one who thought it was impractical.”
His dad turned out to be more right than Victor could have dreamed at the time.
Victor fell in love with clay in one of his required courses, and discovered a special passion and talent for sculpting figures. He started getting commissioned for statues when he was just 23 years old. Now he is the only living artist to have three—soon to be four—statues in the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol.
Victor’s statues, many of which are commissioned, encompass a wide range of social roles. They include prominent Native leaders, civil rights activists, veterans, police, firefighters, athletes, and civil servants.
A good figural piece, Victor says, has three layers. The most shallow layer is subject matter, followed by narrative or story, and concept: that which conveys meaning on a deeper level.
“If you look at my pieces, you can find those levels in all of them,” Victor said. “That’s why they’re often very personal to me. I love when people look and really try to think about the artwork and what it means.”
Though creating his lifelike bronze sculptures requires a great deal of technical knowledge, for Victor the “how” of sculpting is much less interesting than the “why.”
“In my artwork, concept is king,” he said. “To me, that’s the real creative side of art, and what separates work as art.”
The concept for his statue The Angel, for instance, was born while Victor was collaborating with a photographer on images of professional dancers.
“I was thinking back on art history and romantic art as a movement and how we, as human beings, relate to the world around us,” Victor said. “And the beauty of this young woman in this perfect pose, the grace of it, and yet the temporality that we all have as human beings. It’s really about life and death, beauty and frailty.”
Originally from California, Victor first came to Idaho when he was working on the commissioned statue of the WWII Airman, located in front of the Boise Airport. He enjoyed Boise so much that during another project where he worked on the Steve Appleton monument at Boise State, he accepted an invitation for a longer-term residency at the university. After the residency concluded, Victor decided to stay.
“I don’t always love the traffic, but Boise is a great city,” he said. “You’ve got people that are still willing to help their neighbors, and make friends, and really build a community. It’s just such a great place to live.”
You can find Victor’s statues in Boise and throughout Idaho, including former Boise Junior College coach Lyle Smith, who stands at Albertsons Stadium on Boise State University’s campus. His fourth statue for the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol, of civil rights activist Daisy Bates, will likely be formally installed in May of this year.
