Nicholas Waite "Nick" Benson (born August 19, 1964) is a third generation American stone carver, stone letterer and owner of

The John Stevens Shop The John Stevens Shop, founded in 1705, is a stone carving business on Thames Street in Newport, Rhode Island, that is one of the oldest continuously operating businesses in the United States. History John Stevens was born in Oxfordshire, Eng ...

Newport, Rhode Island Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, and northeast of New Yor ...

. He was named a 2010

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

Early life

Nick Benson began working in his family business,

at age fifteen for his father, John Everett Benson. Nick is a third generation stone carver and letterer. He studied Drawing and Design at State University of New York at Purchase in 1986. Benson spent 1987 at the

Schule für Gestaltung Basel The Schule für Gestaltung Basel (Basel School of Design), located at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basel Switzerland, and its students have influenced the international graphic design community since it opened in 1968. Its tradition is shaped ...

Basel, Switzerland , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS), ...

where he studied

calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined ...

, type design, typography, and drawing under Andre Gurtler, Christian Mengelt and

Armin Hofmann Armin Hofmann ( HonRDI) (29 June 1920 – 18 December 2020) was a Swiss graphic designer. He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts at the age of twenty-six. Hofmann followed Emil Ru ...

. He returned to the U.S. in 1988 and continued to work under John Benson in The John Stevens Shop. His father passed on the business to him in 1993. Benson expands the traditional arts of hand lettering and stone carving through his designs. He is also committed to teaching young artisans, in the hopes that they will go on to create their own works and thereby ensure that the legacy of this centuries-old artistic practice endures. He has had several design students, especially from nearby

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase the ...

, and apprentices work with him in the shop and on projects. His uncle was the American photographer Richard Benson. Richard Benson was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1986, making the Bensons one of two families with multiple MacArthur fellows.

Work

Benson has created a distinctive architectural lettering for these architectural and monumental commissions, with careful attention to the effects that large scale, shifting light, and long-term weathering have on the letters, as well as carefully crafting very small details of each letter. "The entire composition is key," he explained in an interview with the architectural historian

Judith Dupré Judith Dupré (born in Providence, Rhode Island) is a writer, structural historian, and public speaker. She is the ''New York Times'' bestselling author of several works of narrative nonfiction on art, design, and architecture. She has been descr ...

, "but the proportion of the letter, the design of the particular letter form itself, is extremely important too. Equally important is the cadence of the text, how the negative space is used, word spacing, line spacing—all of that is absolutely crucial to good inscriptional carving." He developed an original font that draws on both classical Greek letter forms and contemporary

sans serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ser ...

lettering for the

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is a national memorial located in West Potomac Park next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It covers and includes the ''Stone of Hope'', a granite statue of Civil Rights Movement le ...

, on the

National Mall The National Mall is a landscaped park near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and va ...

. Benson's work at

has also included personal

gravestone A headstone, tombstone, or gravestone is a stele or marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. It is traditional for burials in the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religions, among others. In most cases, it has the deceased's name, da ...

s and tomb markers. Benson's father, grandfather and his predecessors at the Shop have created individual gravestones on materials including grey

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

and Rhode Island

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

. His carvings can be found in the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of ch ...

, the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

, at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, and in Washington D.C., the

National World War II Memorial The World War II Memorial is a national memorial in the United States dedicated to Americans who served in the armed forces and as civilians during World War II. It is located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The memorial consists ...

and the

Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial is a United States presidential memorial in Washington, D.C. honoring Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States. ...

. He is a recipient of a 2007

National Heritage Fellowship The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's ...

awarded by the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

, which is the United States' highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.

Family

Benson lives in Jamestown,

Rhode Island Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...

, with his wife and two children.

References

External links

John Stevens Shop
official website {{DEFAULTSORT:Benson, Nicholas 1964 births Living people American typographers and type designers MacArthur Fellows Stone carvers State University of New York at Purchase alumni American designers Businesspeople from Rhode Island Artists from Rhode Island National Heritage Fellowship winners