PRESS RELEASE EXTRACT

Sentient Terrains presents a series of new ceramic projects, assemblages, and related site studies. The ceramic works as ship/vector objects investigate metabolism, climate, and transmutation and are a continuation of the Land/Sea series shown in the gallery in2019. Site studies and assemblages in the form of proposals, video, and diagrammatic expressions examine holistic and systemic definitions of ceramics related to specific places, materials, and geologic time. Flags exploring metabolism, transmutation, and correlations between living and non-living systems are suspended from the walls and activate the gallery with subtle movement. Two large-scale photographic images of Medieval/Anthropocene characters anchor the space as witnesses.

For the past 50 years, John’s work has been fundamentally about ecology in an expanded frame. His understanding of land, sea, and atmosphere engages interrelated cycles of natural and man-made materials and processes. This world view, originating in studies of the earth sciences, was developed through the practice of ceramics, installations, and conceptual proposals. His practice embodies material and conceptual transmutation as a symbiotic merging of physical matter and living systems across geologic time as an emergent paradigm he defines as global metabolism.

John’s practice embraces an integration of ecology, ontology, self-organizing systems, energy flow, and aesthetics with expanded ceramics as protagonist, engaging narratives that seek to transcend the dichotomy of the living and non-living. The retrospective exhibition, The Sea Within the Land, of 2019 surveyed John’s decades-long investigation of geologic time, sites, and other natural phenomena.