While his first major piece of art sold to Whitney Museum in 1967, it could be said that Bennett Bean's art career actually started in 1981.
That was the year Bennett permanently ended teaching at Wagner College in New York and left the city for the New Jersey countryside and focus exclusively on his artwork.
That was a good bet on his part. Since that moment in time, he now has his artwork in the permanent collection of such esteemed museums as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Southern California.
But as Bennett explains in his interview with the Spy at the Academy Art Museum from last week, it was due to this newly found freedom, which he calls a "romantic involvement," that has produced the extraordinary pottery and colors now on display in a major exhibition or his work entitled Be Careful What You Fall in Love With this fall at the AAM.