JOHN FRASER | Collage | WAITING ROOM
January 7 - February 9, 2024
Mine, like countless others, is a meditative practice.
My work, for over forty years, has been concerned with things of a timeless and universal import. These concerns have been manifested materially and formally, via geometry; its forms and shapes, suggestion, and restrained applications of combined processes. A builder’s logic has always been employed, allowing for other considerations to co-exist, such as incident and metaphor. Architecture and the built world have always prompted my thinking and my work’s facture, with the autonomy of the final object being primary. My collage works on and of paper are, like my work in assemblage, are the result of a constructive process.
As I have traveled, I have been arrested by how other global cultures address their built environment. While we at times would rather tear down and re-build, many cultures, out of respect, and perhaps necessity and practicality, restore and reinforce what exists. What I have found most interesting has been the relationship between human-made beauty and the passage of time, and how this visible and tangible entropy can be felt, and how wear can become an attribute. Ultimately, my goal is to produce objects worthy of study and reflection. My desire being to provide the potential viewer an opportunity… for a contemplative viewing experience, and mostly, for seeing.
John Fraser works within the disciplines of drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography. He received a BA from Roosevelt University in Chicago, and a MFA from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. His work is currently represented by galleries in Fort Worth, TX, Wells, ME, The Hague- The Netherlands, and Nashville, TN (an Art Advisory). Fraser’s earliest exhibited work was his photography, the primary focus of his practice from the mid-1970’s through the mid-1980’s. His first one-person exhibitions were in 1980, and to date, his work has been featured in one-person exhibitions throughout the United States, Germany, and Canada, and in group exhibitions throughout the United States, and in The Hague, Germany, Spain, England, Japan, Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Hungary, and Iceland. His work is held in public and private collections throughout the United States, in public collections in Spain, Iceland, and Canada, and in private collections in Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Iceland, and Scotland.
His work has been awarded fellowships and grants from Arts Midwest / National Endowment for the Arts, and The Illinois Arts Council, and he has been an Artist in Residence at YADDO in Saratoga Springs, NY, at Illinois State University, twice at The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation in Westport Island, Maine, at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska, and at Hafnarborg, The Hafnarfjordur Center of Culture and Fine Art, near Reykjavik, Iceland. As an educator, Fraser has held adjunct studio positions at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, and at Dominican University in River Forest, IL. In addition, he has been a visiting artist and/or lecturer at Colleges and Universities in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, California, Utah, West Virginia, Michigan, Arkansas, Nebraska, and the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. In February-March, 2023, Fraser was a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome, Italy, within their Visiting Artists & Scholar Program.