Lisa Benham was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, earning a BFA (Painting and Drawing concentration) along a with minor degrees in music and psychology.

 

  After raising a family and expanding her creative edges to work primarily as a digital artist in Silicon Valley for almost two decades, she returned to formal education, earning an MS degree in Environmental Studies, a certificate in GIS (think deep play with maps), and a certificate in Buddhist chaplaincy. Always seeming to meld her areas of interest in unexpected ways, she combined much of the above while working as a paid "eco-chaplain," teaching meditation, mindfulness, and ecological literacy in both San Quentin State Prison and Elmwood, the Santa Clara County Jail, before moving to Springdale, Utah in beautiful Zion Canyon in autumn of 2015.

 

  With her recent and deepening return to the fine arts, she continues to reside and creatively thrive in this amazing canyon community, along with her amazing wife and two cats. Their co-founding and proprietorship of 2 Cranes Inn-Zion in neighboring Rockville provides yet another avenue where she can broadly share her love of place and creativity. 

 

  The natural world remains an endless source of health and wonder, and she feels almost remiss when not lending at least some creative eye or homage, daily, to nature’s endless treasures. Her environmental academic background further informs the dizzying fractal depths of both simplicity and complexity that the world presents, everywhere. She humbly tries to express what too often feels inexpressible, as she builds small, fleeting artifacts — love totems to what she sees, feels, and wonders upon.