John Wantz
I’m John Wantz an artist living in Santa Fe New Mexico for more than ten years. I’m the owner of Creative Visions and this site: santafehairlessart.com. I create ceramics at my studio and mixed media watercolor gouache pen & ink paintings. Some of my paintings I produce from photographs taken on my travels, others are done on site painted ‘en plain air’. Santa Fe has spectacular landscapes all around with incredible high- desert light, that is quite irresistible. Both my ceramics and painting continue to explore color texture shape design and historical influences.
Looking back to high school in Wisconsin, I received the senior’s award from ‘Lion’s Club’ for outstanding art’s student from my school that included one year’s college tuition. After that I earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Art Institute of Chicago; my Master of Arts Degree from Northern Illinois University in Dekalb Illinois.
I completed a career teaching art at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois taking an ‘early’ and relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Of particular note, while I was at College of DuPage, I co-created co-directed and co-coordinated along with a personal friend and colleague of the college, Pam Lowrie, the execution of a CERAMIC MURAL: ‘AIDOS’. Several dedicated art students also became involved for an extended period on this project as well.
‘Aidos’ is 12’ high x 44’ long installed in the main entrance to the Physical Education and Recreation Building at College of DuPage. YOU MAY VIEW AIDOS by searching on line: College of DuPage and click in turn- general information – MacAnich Arts Center – Gahlberg Gallery – Permanent Art Collection -Ceramics – click image to see whole mural work. The SRC College of DuPage Library has another ceramic work of mine”’ Untitled’ 19″ x 23″x 21″ that you can see in the Gahlberg Permanent Art Collection while at that site. A video of Aidos possibly a CD maybe available to borrow through a interlibrary loan of how that mural was made. The college filmed Aidos as it was being made.
Two pieces of my ceramic sculptural ceramics were also included in the permanent art collection of the National Center of the Theosophical Society of America in Wheaton Illinois. I am a lifetime member. I also have my art works in private collections: Taiwan, Australia, and the United States.
In addition to teaching and being an artist, I’ve traveled widely to Asia, Europe, Mexico, Canada, and the USA. I have been influenced by art/ artists in many of these places. Pre-Japanese ‘Jomon’ pottery, French post Impressionist: Pierre Bonnard, and French ceramist : Bernard Palissy are three artists whom have had impact on my work. I like diversity and variations to appear in my work. I see myself generally as a complex person in a complex world subscribing to: more is more’ rather than ‘less is more’.
I have exhibited at various solo duo and group venues in Illinois and in Santa Fe in either professional gallery group shows off Second Street, occasionally Canyon Road’s La Mesa Gallery, Santa Fe Community College Art Gallery in a 2007 show guest juried by Linda Durham, group shows including one at the formerly: College of Santa Fe: Political Art Show (now Santa Fe University of Art and Design). I had Hispanic ‘looking’ ceramics in the Spanish Colonial Museum Store of Santa Fe.
John Wantz