Sculpture

Menorah (Sabbath/Channukah), bronze

110 x 58 x 50 inches

Sculpture

Suzanne Benton created over 700 welded steel and bronze metal sculpture works and masks. With a BA from Queens College (CUNY) in Fine Arts, Benton went on to study welded sculpture at the Silvermine School of Art, New Canaan, CT in1965. She'd thought she'd created her last masks in 1996 to bring to Sarajevo and Zenica, Bosnia one year after the war, to lead mask and story workshops with refugee women and youth. But then in 2011, she worked in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2011, leading a welding sculpture workshop at the Sculpture Department, Dhaka University. There she created two new welded masks during demonstrations for the students. Most recently, she's been creating copper and paper pulp masks, and copper, bronze, and cor-ten steel steles. Her artworks are in public and private collections worldwide.

Early on, Benton described her fascination with the welding process: "I found my medium, the welding torch, the great transformer. It brought me into a cosmic world. I had to live in that sphere of consciousness every day, watching, making the metal move according to my will, my intuition, my brain; I was enchanted by the repetitive actions and the shapes as they appeared before me."

Beloved, welded steel, 79x18x14,inches

Goddess Torso, steel and bronze brazed, 19.25 x 20 x 7.25 inches, 1971 .

Delilah as the Sphinx, copper coated steel

26 x 13 x 11 inches