Jesse Aaron
(1887–1979)
BornLake City, Florida
ActiveGainesville, Florida
BiographyUsing a chisel, hatchet, and chainsaw, Jesse J. Aaron transformed roots, trunks, and branches of the cypress and cedar trees that grew in his native Florida into rough carvings suggesting human and animal figures. Sometimes he added details such as eyes—made with nails set in resin in egg cartons—but usually these works were left bare and unfinished. Aaron said that he was guided to reveal what he already perceived in the wood’s knots and grains: “God put the faces in the wood. Don’t bring me a piece of wood and then 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, born in Lake City, Florida, in 1887, stated that his ancestors included both enslaved African Americans and Seminoles. At a young age, he worked on a farm, and he later was a cook on a railroad and in Florida hotels. He did some cabinetmaking but didn’t devote himself to sculpture until he was in his eighties, reportedly in a moment of financial crisis as his wife needed a cataract operation. By his account, it was a divine calling, as one night in 1968 “the Spirit woke me up and said, ‘Carve Wood.’”
Working at his home in Gainesville, he was immersed in turning wood that he found in nearby forests into both towering totems and small assemblages incorporating discarded objects. He put up a sign reading “Jesse J. Aaron—Sculptor” that attracted the notice of Stuart Purser, an art professor at the University of Florida who became an early supporter of Aaron’s work by arranging local exhibitions. A few years after Aaron died, in 1979, his art came to national attention when it was included in the pivotal exhibition Black Folk Art in America: 1930–1980, which opened in 1982 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Now held in major museum collections, Aaron’s work, with its hewn faces and expressive forms, conveys his appreciation for the natural material that was his muse. “I like to leave the print of my tools on the wood,” he once said. “I don’t mean to change the wood into something it isn’t.”
Allison C. Meier, 2025
This artist’s work was reviewed as part of “Rethinking Biography,” an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).