JOHN MAGNAN STUDIO
About the Artist
Mattapoisett, Massachusetts
508-999-5051
Artist Statement:
My passion is to make things by hand. Sometimes the work is inspired by my observations of the world around me. At other times I'm helping someone else realize their personal vision through art. Either way, the joy is in the making.
Art Education:
Maryland Institute, College of Art, Post-Bacc Program
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, MFA in Sculpture
Life: 31 years creating art for others to appreciate and enjoy
Thoughts on Making Art
There's no way I can get my mind around a complete "philosopy of art," but these quotes I discovered give a few glimpses of what such a philosophy might entail.
Risk
You must accept the reality that you might fail.
You must be totally confindent that you will succeed.
You must be able to hold both these thoughts in your head at the same time.
(Jon Batiste, American Symphony, 2023)
History and Progress
Neither artistic “progress” nor art history are inherently good. Both are simply forms of information that need to be put to good use.
Using traditional techniques and drawing from the aesthetic repositories of the past are merely two means by which to make art, but the decisive question is what it is an artist does with them.
An artist's subjectivity is built, not granted, and that discrete process of development doesn't need to be groundbreaking or anachronistic; it only has to find articulation within its own context.
In the end this is to say something simple: what matters in an artwork is its singularity, one that is achieved qualitatively, not through categorical affirmations of novelty or tradition.
(Sean Tatol, The Baffler, Gimmicks of Future Past, 9/17/2024)
Perfection
Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain. Perfection is the mere repudiation of that ineluctable marginal inexactitude which is the mysterious inmost quality of Being.
(H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, 1905)
A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.
(Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore, 2005)
John Magnan has been creating unique wood sculptures and mixed-media installations for over 30 years.