Photograph of Artist JOHN CLARKE
JOHN CLARKE
Starksboro, - United States



Original Artworks (20)

John Clarke; Venus, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 10 x 21 inches. Artwork description: 241 A woman standing on a black cherry burl...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
10 x 21 inches (25.4 x 53.3 cm)
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John Clarke; Four Hands, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 15 x 36 inches. Artwork description: 241 From a black cherry burl, figures blend in reaching...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
15 x 36 inches (38.1 x 91.4 cm)
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John Clarke; Brothers, 2008, Original Sculpture Wood, 15 x 32 inches. Artwork description: 241 Two brothers grow in and out of their lives together...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2008
15 x 32 inches (38.1 x 81.3 cm)
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John Clarke; Conception, 2007, Original Sculpture Wood, 24 x 60 inches. Artwork description: 241 A couple creates new life...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2007
24 x 60 inches (61.0 x 152.4 cm)
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John Clarke; Laughing-His-Head-Off, 2003, Original Sculpture Wood, 12 x 30 inches. Artwork description: 241 A fellow loses his head to inner questions...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2003
12 x 30 inches (30.5 x 76.2 cm)
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John Clarke; Shampoo, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 18 x 32 inches. Artwork description: 241 Draped in suds, a woman starts a rinse...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
18 x 32 inches (45.7 x 81.3 cm)
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John Clarke; Sleeper, 2006, Original Sculpture Wood, 14 x 25 inches. Artwork description: 241 A sleeping dreamer rests within a black cherry burl...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2006
14 x 25 inches (35.6 x 63.5 cm)
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John Clarke; Reunion, 2015, Original Sculpture Wood, 20 x 11 inches. Artwork description: 241 Two faces, dark and light, in two connected cherry burls...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2015
20 x 11 inches (50.8 x 27.9 cm)
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John Clarke; Shawl, 2015, Original Sculpture Wood, 10 x 28 inches. Artwork description: 241 A woman wearing a long shawl stands on a black cherry burl...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2015
10 x 28 inches (25.4 x 71.1 cm)
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John Clarke; Elf House, 2013, Original Sculpture Wood, 15 x 26 inches. Artwork description: 241 Six elves share a cramped home in a black cherry burl...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2013
15 x 26 inches (38.1 x 66.0 cm)
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John Clarke; Mother And Son, 2008, Original Sculpture Wood, 14 x 60 inches. Artwork description: 241 A second birth in a black cherry trunk growing from a burl...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2008
14 x 60 inches (35.6 x 152.4 cm)
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John Clarke; First Born, 2010, Original Sculpture Wood, 14 x 28 inches. Artwork description: 241 Mather, father and baby share space in a black cherry burl...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2010
14 x 28 inches (35.6 x 71.1 cm)
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John Clarke; Flames, 2012, Original Sculpture Wood, 14 x 34 inches. Artwork description: 241 Two figures rise in flames...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2012
14 x 34 inches (35.6 x 86.4 cm)
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John Clarke; Guardian, 2014, Original Sculpture Wood, 6 x 18 inches. Artwork description: 241 Parent keeping watch...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2014
6 x 18 inches (15.2 x 45.7 cm)
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John Clarke; Double Helix, 2008, Original Sculpture Wood, 10 x 24 inches. Artwork description: 241  Black cherry burl ...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2008
10 x 24 inches (25.4 x 61.0 cm)
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John Clarke; Echo, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 14 x 60 inches. Artwork description: 241  Black cherry on burl base ...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
14 x 60 inches (35.6 x 152.4 cm)
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John Clarke; Grand Mere, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 24 x 22 inches. Artwork description: 241  Sugar maple with heavy spalting ...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
24 x 22 inches (61.0 x 55.9 cm)
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John Clarke; Egg In Hand, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 12 x 4 inches. Artwork description: 241  Black cherry burl wood sculpture ...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
12 x 4 inches (30.5 x 10.2 cm)
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John Clarke; The Bath, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 18 x 24 inches. Artwork description: 241  Butternut sculpture from two branches ...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
18 x 24 inches (45.7 x 61.0 cm)
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John Clarke; Dancer, 2016, Original Sculpture Wood, 14 x 23 inches. Artwork description: 241  Black cherry burl, woman dancing,  ...
John Clarke
Original Wood Sculpture, 2016
14 x 23 inches (35.6 x 58.4 cm)
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Artist Statement

VERMONT HARDWOOD SCULPTURE ROUGH AND SMOOTH
John Clarke carves hardwood sculpture aiming to reveal the struggles that shape growth in any life form. At Princeton, he majored in English and minored in Art History, but became an English teacher when he discovered during the ‘60s that his love for young people exceeded his love of artistic expression – for the moment. After teaching high school students for five years and surviving Vietnam, he fled to Vermont where he taught at UVM for 25 years. In South Starksboro and Buels Gore, he found refuge in the woods where overgrown pastures generated wildly distorted trees struggling with each other to find a safe pathway to sunlight. At first he pulled out firewood, but stumbled onto strange shapes that deserved polishing and a few coats of oil. He began to focus on burls, whose tortured shapes could yield a fine bowl.

In the 1990s, carving burls absorbed his focus, not as bowls but as human figures whose growth was shaped by unruly circumstance. Black maple burls became his favorite medium. Attacked from the outside my disease, fungus, sand or damage, trees turned themselves inside out in their fight to remain upright. Sculpting a burl reveals the patterns a tree devises to remain standing among other trees. A burl could become a pregnant woman, a blinded king, a boy climbing a dead snag or a family of elves. John began to show these creatures around Addison County Art on Main, The Great Falls Art Gallery, The Art House, Middlebury Arts Walk, and the @ Gallery in Bristol. Further afield, he showed his burls at SEABA in Burlington, The Maltex Building in Burlington, National Life of Vermont, the Studio Place in Barre and several years of Open Studio He also brought his figures and tools to Vermont schools where young people could taste the allure of banging a chisel into some formless stump.

John Clarke now works at the intersection of the human and the arboreal, exploring patterns in wood that help explain what it takes to live.
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