From John Potter
Boozhoo indinawemaaganidog (Hello all my relatives)!
Welcome everyone to the MacLean Literary Festival!
I am deeply honored, grateful, and humbled to have been chosen as the featured artist for this year’s festival. Especially so, since I’m following in the footsteps of “Uncle Kevin” Red Star, who was the featured artist here two years ago. Talk about a tough act to follow.
I honestly can’t believe that me and my work are even here. Or that my paintings and I are included in an event featuring so many luminous stars in the Universe of environmental understanding and preservation of nature-based wisdom and knowledge.
It is my hope that my work, and my words, will join as naturally and gracefully as a raindrop in a river with those of the renowned and revered authors, educators, culture-keepers, and visionaries in attendance–and presenting here–this weekend.
I offer my profound gratitude to the festival’s organizers, those both in front of and behind the scenes, as well as to the fine people here at the Dana Gallery, for working so hard to host my first-ever solo show.
A huge shout-out and chi miigwech to my friend, Lauren Monroe Jr., for his generosity in allowing me to use his amazing photograph of our Buffalo relatives at home below Chief Mountain as reference material for the festival’s signature piece, “Home’s Embrace.”
And I extend my deep, deep gratitude for the opportunity to be here with so many like-minded and like-hearted souls–to acknowledge and express our shared love and understanding of the quiet, dignified voices of the Natural World.
I hope that you, the viewers of my work here, will see something in my work that might awaken the natural world within you, and help you to discover your own narrative in Nature.
May we all listen and act with our hearts to the front, always.
Mi’iw.
Apiichigo miigwech biizindaawiyeg.
John
Show Opening
Friday, September 6
5-8 PM
During First Friday art walk
Free admission
Artist & Author Reception
Friday, September 27
6-8 PM
Drinks by the Rhino & hors d’oeuvres by Tagliare
Music by Black Ram Guitar
$25 admission at the door
About John Potter
John was raised in the upper Midwest, in constant motion it seemed, between his parents’ home in the Chicago area and his Lac du Flambeau “rez” family in Northern Wisconsin. He eventually grew to become a blend of both a “traditional art education” in high school and college, and the Traditional teachings of his Ojibwe Elders.
Prominent among those teachings was a belief in, and a commitment to, a familial view of the relationship between humans and the Natural World. A knowing that the Land held and nurtured a vast and varied community of Relatives, which included every “being” from the stones to the stars–to which we humans belong and need to continually honor–by listening to the “narrative” of Nature.
About his work John says, “It’s my belief that the fates of humans and the Natural World are bound and interwoven. It’s hard to watch as humanity seems bent upon eliminating the wild in its obsession with having dominion over wilderness. The more we seek to dominate (destroy) the wild, instead of seeking harmony with it, the more at risk we are of losing connection to our true selves.”
John earned degrees in Illustration and Fine Art from Utah State University before moving to Montana in 1982 to take a position at the Billings (MT) Gazette as the Newsroom Artist. After nearly twenty award-winning years there, he followed his passion and turned his focus to painting full time in 2002.
John’s landscapes, wildlife and Native subjects are now in private collections around the country and around the world, and he has works in permanent collection at the Montana Historical Society Museum in Helena, MT; the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY; and at The Brinton Museum in Big Horn, WY.
His work has been featured in Southwest Art, Art of the West, Cowboys & Indians, Western Art Collector, and Big Sky Journal magazines.
John keeps a (messy) home and studio in Red Lodge, MT.
Festival Fundraiser
John Potter has generously agreed to share the sales proceeds of Home’s Embrace with the Maclean Literary Festival.
Potter’s recent painting, Home’s Embrace, is the festival’s signature image this year. It celebrates the release of a small herd of around 40 bison into their Blackfeet homeland in July, 2023.
The National Parks Conservation Association published an article about the bison’s release and its significance for the Blackfeet Nation and Montana. Read the article here.
Michael Jamison, the author writes,
“Restoring native species to their native habitats is rare indeed, let alone restoring sacred animals to sacred lands. In this age of extinction, the currents of “progress” flow strongly in one direction. But Ninnāasṫǔkoō is an exception to the rule. The Blackfeet iinniiwa release is that rarest of gifts—a two-way tide that carries us into the future while simultaneously returning what was lost to the past, laying the groundwork for both reconciliation and renaissance.”
Available Paintings
To purchase, please contact Dana Gallery
info@danagallery.com
406.721.3154
