"In My Lines of Visioin"
- Ongoing: until Friday, October 8, 2010
- Monday: 10:00am
- Tuesday: 10:00am
- Wednesday: 10:00am
- Thursday: 10:00am
- Friday: 10:00am
- Where: University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Fayetteville
- Cost: Not available
- Age limit: Not available
The contemporary American Indian exhibition opening "In My Lines of Visioin" will feature woodcuts, monotypes and linocut prints by artist John Well-Off-Man.
Exhibition dates: Sept 6 - Oct 8, 2010, Anne Kittrell Art Gallery, Arkansas Union, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Artist reception: Sept. 9, 5-7 pm
Gallery hours: Mo-Fr 10 am - 6 pm
The contact info for the Anne Kittrell Art Gallery is:
Sarah Busch
Anne Kittrell Art Gallery Coordinator
Office of Student Activities
ARKU A665 Fayetteville, AR 72701
University of Arkansas Fayetteville
Phone: 479-575-5255
Fax: 479-575-3441
upart@uark.edu
The Art and Life of John Well-Off-Man, Montana artist
Art is Ojibwe artist John Well-Off-Man’s search for knowledge.
John Well-Off-Man’s artistic principles are rooted in two doctrines: learning is the foundation of existence and true aesthetic perfection is a disagreeable abstraction.
Though advanced in multiple multi-media endeavors, from photography and woodcutting, to oil and pastel painting, learning, and keeping an open mind to being taught, is imperative to Well-Off-Man’s imaginative ideology. Art is his search for knowledge.
The Art of John Well-Off-Man
Well-Off-Man’s artistic efforts run the innovatory range of rendition: fine art editions of contemporary Native American Art, silk-screens, etchings, linocuts, woodcuts, monoprints, custom black and white photography prints, and original oil paintings and drawings.
Similar to his stark sketches and photography, Well-Off-Man’s paintings are the products of memory as well as sensation. His intensely hued paintings emerge from a process of long rumination. The visual experience of all his work, early and late, is of immediacy, directness, acuity, vividness. He’s constantly investigating new ways to stimulate the eye, painting with touches and patches of color in wisely calculated juxtaposition to one another.
At once firmly melancholic and caringly tenderhearted, Well-Off-Man’s black and white photography likewise scrapes a raw, unexposed nerve.
“Black and white connects with the eye better,” said Well-Off-Man during our interview. “With color, people don’t look past the color and see the framing, nor do they see beyond the colorful prettiness. They get overtaken by the color, but if you examine the photo, often you’ll see that there’s nothing of substance beyond the prettiness of the colors. A good strong black and white image stays in the mind longer than a color image, and makes a longer, more indelible impression.”
Another one of Well-Off-Man’s favorite forms of artistic enunciation comes through monoprinting – a form of printmaking that has carbons and lines which cannot be reproduced exactly the same way twice. Steady layers of ink are used to either trace or hand paint images.
Life of John Well-Off-Man
Well-Off-Man’s vast interests in printing, photography, and drawing stem from his childhood. His roots are sinewy and thick and can be traced to Rocky Boy’s Reservation, south of Havre.
In fact, he grew up listening to and speaking Ojibwe, the beloved language of his ancestors that today is nearly extinct. As an artist and as an individual, he tends to shy away from magnificent illusions or sweeping generalizations, which often attempt to frivolously explain away or narrowly pigeonhole underrepresented artists.
“To be labeled a ‘Native American Indian’ artist is a problem,” said Well-Off-Man. “‘American Indian’ or ‘Indian’ sounds to me like somebody from India. I’m an Ojibwe. I’m not somebody from India. I consider myself an artist first – which to me is somebody who has a vision in their mind and is able to put it down, express it, and who can connect and communicate an idea.”
One of Well-Off-Man’s most prolific subject materials is the bison – the shaggy, massive mammal greatly lionized by the Ojibwe’s as well as many other tribes of indigenous peoples. Often he tries to capture his own deep attachment to and reverence for the buffalo in his artwork.
“The buffalo is considered sacred to Ojibwe,” said Well-Off-Man. “A lot of people’s survival was based on what the buffalo gave and provided them: food, clothing, shelter. When I see a buffalo herd, I take images in a respectful way, without offending the beauty of the animal.”
Artist John Well-Off-Man
The spiritual and artistic world of John Well-Off-Man brings together and draws upon an atypical intersection of ancient and modernistic influences. These unconventional amalgamations wield a driving and compelling force and give an impulse and a hunger to his perceptive actions. Indeed, he is always looking for a new visual or artistic logic.
© 2010 Brian D'Ambrosio
John Well-Off-Man
John Well-Off-Man, a member of the Chippewa-Cree tribe, was born and raised in Havre, Montana and on the Rocky Boy Reservation. He received his diploma in photography from Ohio Visual Art Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio in 1978. He studied printmaking at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico and received his Associate of Fine Arts degree in 1990. He graduated with a B.A. degree from the University of Montana in 2005 and received his M.A. in Fine Arts, Integrated Arts and Education from UM’s Creative Pulse Program, in 2007. Well-Off-Man worked as a Photographer/Film Developer for Instructional Media Services at University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. During this time he also produced exhibits for the Missoula Historical Society and the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library of the University of Montana. He produced the visual exhibit "Their Eyes Tell Everything," a photo-history of the Montana Chippewa-Cree with a grant from the Montana Committee for the Humanities. This exhibit is now in the permanent collection of the Montana Museum of Art & Culture. He was project director of the youth photo project "Photography, An Image of Each Other." The Montana Committee for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanties, and A Territory Resource have funded this cross cultural awareness program. In 2009, he received a one month Ford Foundation artist residency award at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana.
John Well-Off-Man exhibited nationally and internationally with works included in the permanent collection of the Montana Museum of Art & Culture at The University of Montana, Missoula, Montana and the Westphalian State Museum of Natural History in Münster, Germany. John has a printmaking studio in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Artist Statement
My role as artist is to learn from others, to take what is given to me and pass on this knowledge to future generations so that they may live art in a healthy environment. My formal education as printmaker, photographer, and painter is fairly extensive, enough so that I am able to impart this knowledge with technical skill if needed.
The new series of prints to emerge from my etching press will encourage audiences to explore the techniques involved in printmaking. The audience will see how various techniques are used to create movement, depth or a certain atmosphere on a two dimensional surface through the printmaking process. I create images with simple abstractions, forms, color and line, constructing and reflecting upon a real scene.
John Well-Off-Man
This event was posted Sept. 5, 2010 and last updated Sept. 7, 2010
