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John Frederick Walker
Artist Statement:
In some ways it was inevitable that books would become a focus of my art—but
not simply because I’m also an author. Over the years I was immersed in various
modes of minimalism, many of the artistic devices I gravitated towards then would
eventually allow me to do more with volumes than write them. My preoccupation
with the division of pictorial space into diptychs and quadrants, the iteration of
images and openings, all brought me to the book as a visual object.
My initial book-based pieces in the late 1990s evolved haphazardly from empty
sketchbooks, journals, notebooks, and damaged bindings I was reluctant to part
with, even though I’d torn or sliced out their contents. I kept them going, in effect,
by treating them as experimental surfaces for the compulsive drawing, I’ve done
since childhood. The loose-facing pages of broken-backed texts became armatures
for mark-making, which essentially reconstituted them as drawings and later,
mixed-media works calling up the presence of lost ideas, vanished sketches,
journals, plans, lists, stories, and arguments that still echoed from the missing pages ripped from their spines.
What one has done artistically often becomes apparent only in retrospect. I see
now that I’ve been captivated by the splayed book, caught in the moment when the
volume is open and proffering to the imagination a fragment of the lost world that
was once between its covers.
From the beginning, these one-of-a-kind works were largely based on altered book
forms, but like paintings, were never intended to be handheld and experienced
page by page. Neither are they simple depictions of books—they embody the
very idea of a book, that simple, side-hinged block of sheets of paper, given life by written language and graced with illustrations, that has functioned for a millennium as a near-universal means of encoding vast amounts of human culture.
My book-works are what physically gutted books look like; empty covers, slashed
and torn pages, bolted-down texts, rubbed-out, painted, and scribbled-over texts and images. Increasingly, these brutalized, savaged, broken texts evoke what the banning of books means: censorship, suppression of information, and the crushing of human expression.
JOHN FREDERICK WALKER
Instagram: @john.frederick.walker
Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions:
2024 “Torn Books and Lost Texts” Five Points Gallery, Torrington CT Sept 27 – Nov 9
2024 “This World” (2-person with Jeff Joyce), Standard Space Gallery, Sharon, CT
2022 “Art in the Stacks,” David M. Hunt Library, Falls Village, CT
2019 “Book Works,” Judy Black Memorial Gardens & Park, Washington Depot, CT
2016 “Split Images and Lost Texts 2006-2016,” Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT
2016 “Open, and Closed,” Brooklyn Public Library, Brooklyn, NY
2013 “Book Art,” Hotchkiss Library, Sharon, CT
2012 “The Altered Book,” J. Eugene Smith Library, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT
2011 “Bookworks,” Ober Gallery, Kent, CT
2006 “Lost Texts,” Argazzi Art, Lakeville, Connecticut
1999 “Little Dead Texts 1996-1999,” Westenburg Gallery, Marfa, TX
1995 “Geometric Drawings & Monoprints,” Swiss Hospitality Institute, Washington, CT
1993 “Cancellation Paintings,” Washington Art Association, Washington, CT
1993 “Paintings and Drawings 1972-1992″ Kent School Art Gallery, Kent, CT
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2023 “Mysterious Circumstances,” curated by Martha Willette Lewis, Institute Library, New Haven, CT
2023 “Not Just for Reading,” curated by Chris Perry, Mark Twain Library, Redding CT
2022 “10th Anniversary Exhibition,” Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT
2022 “Rotating / Axis,” Furnace Art On Paper Archive, Falls Village, CT
2022 11th Annual “Art of the Book” Exhibit, Rochester Public Library, Rochester, NY
2021 10th Annual “Art of the Book” Exhibit, Rochester Public Library, Rochester, NY
2021 “Post Pandemic,” Washington Art Association, Washington, CT
2019 “New Nudes,” Craven Contemporary, Kent, CT
2019 “Small Works,” Five Points Annex, Torrington, CT
2016 “Bookish,” Hotchkiss Library, Sharon, CT
2015 “Putting It All Together,” Sharon Historical Society & Museum, Sharon CT
2014 “Off On Tangents” curated by Nancy Lasar, Washington Art Association, Washington, CT
2014 “Meeting Past 2014” Akin Free Library & Museums, Pawling, NY
2014 “Artist’s Choice: Works Selected by Robert Andrew Parker,” Washington Art Association, Washington, CT
2013 “The Medicine Show,” Central Booking, New York, NY
2012 “Summer Exhibition,” The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY
2011 “Multiple, Limited, Unique: Highlights from the Permanent Collection,” curated by Alexander Campos and Jen Larson, The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY. Travels to: Atlanta, Minneapolis, Houston, Easton PA, San Francisco. (Catalog)
2006 “Global,” curated by Richard Klein, Westport Arts Center, Westport, CT
2000 “Works On Paper,” Westenberg Gallery, Park Avenue Armory, New York, NY
1999 “Celebrating the Millennium,” Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, CT
1997 “Walker/ Gibbs/ Sullivan,” Westenburg Gallery, Marfa, TX
1996 “A 30-Mile Circle,” Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, CT
1992 “19 Artists from Kent,” Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, CT
Public Collections:
Brooklyn Museum Library, Brooklyn, NY
Center for Book Arts Permanent Collection, New York, NY
Clark Art Institute Library, Williamstown, MA
Franklin Furnace Artists’ Books Collection, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Auerbach Library, Hartford, CT
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
Selected Bibliography:
Brian Slattery, “Art Exhibition Unveils The Horror Beneath The Horror,” New Haven Independent, New Haven CT, November 3, 2023. https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/art_exhibition_unveils_the_horror_beneath_the_horror
“Artists in Space / John Frederick Walker / Book Art” Lightwood magazine interview
https://lightwoodpress.com/2023/09/22/artists-in-space-john-frederick-walker-book-art/
Amy Krzanik, Rural Intelligence.com interview, November 21, 2019:
https://www.ruralintelligence.com/community/the-rural-we-john-frederick-walker
Tracey O’Shaughnessy, “Artwork at a loss for words,” Republican-American, March 22, 2019
Elyse Sadtler, “In Washington Depot, ‘Book Works’ exhibit deconstructs, reinterprets written word,” Litchfield County Times, March 6, 2019
Emily Soell, “ ‘Book Art’ a Paean to Words on Paper,” Lakeville Journal, June 13, 2013
Eshoo, Amy, 560 Broadway: A New York Drawing Collection at Work, 1991-2006, Fifth Floor Foundation, New York in Association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2008, p. 172
Frances Chamberlain, “A Little Print Shop Cooperative Called Road Kill Press,” The New York Times, February 5, 1995, CT section, p. 2.
Affiliations:
National Council, The Drawing Center, New York, NY 1998-2007
