The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2024 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
John Christensen
Christensen OKO PrototypeAUSTIN TX 78745 United States Work Phone: 5124623342 Website: https://www.christensen-oko.com/
Bio
John Christensen – BIO
John Christensen is an artist working in Austin, Texas. Before 1990, he sited ephemeral works in rural landscapes of New York, Georgia and Texas. Since 1990, he has focused that sensibility on projects for theatre and for more permanent installations in the public place – often collaborating with choreographers and other design professionals, and, working with unique architectural spaces – making environments for 30 theatrical productions presented worldwide and installing 20 large commissions throughout the USA. First felt, later thought – the objects he sculpts provoke visceral responses and shifts in attention. In recent sculptures and reliefs he has evoked organic systems – branching rhizomes, biotic colonies, neural networks, wave interference patterns, polymers – to make poetic connections between phenomena in disparate fields. He exploits old and new technologies. He sustains a studio practice, going to his studio most days to make things.
Artist Statement
John Christensen – Statement
For three decades I have designed for public, private and theatrical arenas – completing 20 large scale public and private commissions and making environments for 30 productions of modern dance presented worldwide. I bring to these tasks experience with a broad range of materials and processes, and I seek design solutions that are poetic, integrative and surprising. I have considerable experience working with other design professionals, engineers, subcontractors, communities and administrators.
I often take cues from a site. Airport sculptures abstract wind-blown seeds. An Albuquerque installation recalls the region’s theatre of clouds and land-forms. A five-part installation in a nature park magnifies microfauna to expand a theme of habitat creation. These installations sensibly integrate with their physical and cultural contexts. Grand and intimate aspects provide iconic presence and reward close encounter. My intent is disruptive and optimistic – that we may effectively re-imagine personal and communal ambitions.
Conversations with stakeholders sometimes guide the creation of integrated works that invigorate shared purpose, reinforce stakeholders’ missions, and engage a broad audience.