John Buck

John Buck has become a nationally recognized and prolific artist based in Montana, but his artistic roots began in Ames, Iowa under the tutelage of the textile artist Priscilla Sage. As his high school art teacher Sage could see his artistic potential and helped Buck to begin to follow the path that would lead to his success as an artist. Buck is both a sculptor and a printmaker, creating exquisitely unique motifs and sculptural figures with carved wood, bronze, or by woodblock printing. His prints are intensely detailed as he uses a pen, nail, chisel, or his own fingernail to incise a background of images into the print which depict imagery from daily life, nature, or his sculpture. He then adds a large carved image, both figural and object based, onto the woodblock that becomes the larger visual focus. His sculptures are wood or bronze, sometimes kinetic, and often incorporating the human figure. Buck received his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design and his M.F.A from the University of California at Davis. He has been honored with an Individual Artists Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a National Artists Award. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, has been an artist in residence at many institutions, and has taught art at the university level. His artwork included in the collections of Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, and many others. John Buck found his first footings in the art field as a young student in Iowa, where he was mentored by another Iowa artist, and has gone on to develop a successful career and national reputation since those early childhood forays into his artistic abilities.