Thirty years of John Buck’s sculpture and printmaking are surveyed in the traveling exhibition, “John Buck: Iconography,” featuring 50 prints, sculptures, and shadow box constructions.
This retrospective recognizes the reach of Buck’s art and highlights the ongoing regional importance of the artist and his work. An alumnus of the graduate program at University of California, Davis (UC Davis), Buck figures among the artists participating in the most important artistic moment centered at UC Davis in the late 1960s and 1970s.
Buck began making sculpture in wood—a practice he continues today—during the mid-1970s. His sculpture is assembled from the carved and expertly shaped wood into large-scale visionary works, often brightly painted. By 1980, his regard for the carving process had progressed into a passion for printmaking. Buck, along with contemporaries Roger Shimomura and Masami Teraoka, helped to successfully revitalize the traditional woodblock or woodcut print by addressing contemporary, often provocative subject matter in their printed work.
Buck boldly centers one iconic image at the heart of each composition, creating visually coherent essays. Yet, message and meaning can and do shift within Buck’s imagery as does the artist’s contemplations on environment, politics, mythology, and power. Whether his symbols are drawn from popular culture, modern media, or the personal, their background layering is richly developed and seductive.
The exhibit, drawn from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his family foundation, opened on March 12 at the Crocker Art Museum. The exhibition runs through May 15, 2011.
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