John Buck: Iconography

Over the past four decades Iowa-born artist John Buck, working out of his studios in Bozeman, Montana, and in Hawaii, has created a large and enormously important body of woodblock prints and rubbings, sculpture, and three-dimensional wood panels. Both his two- and three-dimensional forms are saturated with a visual and spatial richness of images, icons, symbols, motifs, and an intensely lyrical and deeply authentic evocation of both the natual and social worlds. Tough-minded and visually complex, Buck's art comprises a thorough and relentless examination of deeply personal and shared social concerns. This book includes works from throughout the artist's career: a complete catalogue raisonnŽ of prints from 1980 to 2007, representative works of wood sculpture, a selection of shadowbox-like wood panels, and works from his little-known glass jar series. Ben Mitchell is curator of art of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, Spokane, Washington. Other contributors include Eleanor Heartney, John Yau, and Bud Shark.