John Hoover

From NativeWiki

John Hoover (b. October 13, 1919, Cordova, AK) (Aleut) graduated from Cordova High School in 1938. As a fisherman, he was at first deferred from service in World War II, but was drafted in 1942 where he served in the U.S. Army Transportation Service supplying military posts in the Aleutian Islands. After the war he worked at both fishing and painting. In 1952 he moved with his family to Edmonds, Washington, where he joined Seattle Co-Arts, sharing a gallery on Bellevue. He also took instruction in painting at the Leon Derbyshire School of Fine Art for three years, supporting his family by fishing.

By the late 1950s Hoover's work was being shown in other galleries beyond the co-op and his first sale of a painting was in 1960 to the Seattle Art Museum. While making a fishing boat in 1958, Hoover began making small pieces of art from the scraps of wood, hanging some in his studio. He then moved to painting on cedar planks. By 1960, he began carving wood in earnest by using templates he drew on paper to transfer the designs to the wood. In 1968 he had his first major sculpture show at the Collectors Gallery in Bellevue, Washington. The Bureau of Indian Affairs purchased all but 3 pieces from this show. The remaining three pieces were given as gifts to visiting dignitaries by President Lyndon Johnson. The results of this show allowed him to further extend his vision to include diptych and triptych forms, connected by hinges, as well as creature cutouts and three dimensional shapes. He also increased the size of his work to lifesize and larger than life.

John Hoover sculpture on the cover of this exhibition catalog.

In 1972 Hoover received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts which he used to teach and work at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where Allan Houser was teaching. He took advantage of this opportunity to learn all he could from Houser about sculpture and remained friends with Houser until his death. Hoover made his first large stone sculptures during this visit and also enjoyed the companionship of the other members of the art faculty, including Charles Loloma and Fritz Scholder. In 1973 Hoover had a major exhibition of new work at the Heard Museum, which purchased six pieces for their permanent collection. He also was awarded second place in a sculpture competition at the Heard Museum for his wooden carving, Salmon Woman.

In 1974 Hoover moved to Grapeview, Washington, at the southern end of Puget Sound. He also traveled abroad as an artist-in-residence in the school system for armed forces dependents. That year his triptych, Otter Woman, was awarded first place in sculpture at the Philbrook Museum of Art's American Indian Artists Exhibition. In the next few years he continued to receive first place awards in sculpture at the Heard Museum Art Fair. In 1977, Hoover received his first two public art commissions, for the Daybreak Center in Seattle, something which would prove to be a major source of income for the rest of his life. In 1979 he created his first mobile for a public commission for the King County Alcoholic Center, a type of sculpture he would continue to make with great success.

In 1975, Hoover was given a one-man exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art. In 1982 he was one of the artists honored at Night of the First Americans at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. His work had become more complicated, with transformations affected by opening and closing the hinged pieces of his diptychs and triptychs. He was also adding colored stains to his wood sculptures. In 1982 he also made his first pieces cast in bronze. The early pieces were made of pre-existing cedar sculptures but the wooden pieces could not survive the casting process. He moved to creating large foam molds for later large bronze castings.

In 1995 Hoover's work was chosen to be included in an international traveling exhibition, sponsored by the Heard Museum. He traveled with the work to New Zealand where he met with Maori tribes and talked to Maori people. In 1997, he was included in an exhibit of Native American sculptors whose work was to be installed in the White House garden.

Today, with decades of sculpture work to his credit, John Hoover continues to work at his studio in Grapeview, Washington, where he lives his wife Mary and daughter Anna.