Benton Jones is both an artist, educator and museum administrator. Besides his deep understanding of glass, and more specifically Czech Glass, he is the Director of Art at the Cape Cod Museum of Art and owner of the Millstone Sculpture Gallery, also on Cape Cod.

Much of Benton’s artwork incorporates both glass and metal. Combining these dissimilar materials, each with their own set of properties, poses many technical challenges. This unlikely collaboration of media is central to the uniqueness and beauty of Benton’s art.

At room temperature, glass is brittle, yet vitreous and often transparent. Metal is malleable, crystalline and opaque. These conflicting characteristics need to be understood and overcome in order to marry the two. Benton confronts this conundrum by drawing from his understanding of materials gleaned at Carnegie Mellon University, the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, and his own studios in Brewster, Massachusetts.

For Benton, motivation lies in the search for commonality within disparity, echoing the need for society to strive toward greater acceptance and understanding.

Benton’s wife Jana is from the Czech Republic. Their partnership provided a pathway into the rich culture of glass refinement found in the Czech Republic. “It was a life-altering stroke of fate that my life partner originated from the very country known the world over as the premier kiln-casting region for monumental glass sculpture,” says Jones. This pathway led Jones to develop his own kiln-forming course at the Prague Institute, a study abroad campus for North Carolina State University from 2010 – 2014. He created professional ties with many celebrated contemporary Czech glass artists during this time and through these relationships Jones created the Bohemian Glass Route tour for his students.

In 2016 Jones curated an exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art that highlighted the wide spectrum of techniques available to glass artists titled Clearly: Glass as Sculpture and has since become the museum’s Director.