ABOUT THE ARTIST
My name is John B. Green.
The first fifty plus years of my working career were spent working in all phases and eventually managing our 4-generation family mining business. Sand and gravel mining is an industry that utilizes big, very powerful mining machines to dig large holes in the ground. Our mines annually moved millions of tons of earth. With a strong mechanical and engineering background I designed, built, used and occasionally sold floating dredging equipment used to suck up sand and gravel from lake bottoms.
Except for mine site land reclamation, I had no interest in nor demonstrated any hint of artistic tendencies. Most people considered me to be a hard-nosed, straight to the point engineer type that made equipment design and performance evaluation decisions based solely on quantifiable numbers and facts. What equipment looked like was not a significant factor.
The transition from corporate chief executive to solo sculptor, and I now realize culture change, started with an introduction to wood turning as a possible retirement hobby. It quickly became a passion. Hundreds of bowls, vases, and oddly shaped figures later my skill level advanced to a point that I could make almost anything I wanted. The natural beauty and color of the wood grain exposed by turning amazed and mesmerized me.
A recognizable style emerged centered around wood sculptures made from forked tree branches. Some of these were large enough to create technical problems that could not be overcome with traditional wood turning equipment and methods. I modified and repurposed a piece of obsolete rotational equipment used in another industry to meet my needs for turning large out of balance wood pieces. Eventually a rotational system to create nonsymmetrical pieces that maintained a constant center of rotation evolved. That was an absolute game changer, as it allowed me to create turnings and sculptures most woodturners would never attempt.
Introduction of cast bronze into my work began by accident. While critiquing one of my wooden sculptures, a friend rotated it from a vertical to a horizonal position. He casually said that if that thing had fins it could swim like a fish. I agreed and set out to make some fins. A local sculptor that had a small foundry was willing to help. The bronze enhanced finished piece exceeded my expectations. I wanted to make more, but the local foundryman was unable to do so. At age 73, I purchased used equipment and set up my own foundry. It quickly became obvious that my experience with industrial hard iron casting was of little help with the much different lost wax artistic bronze casting process. The learning curve was neither easy, short nor filled with immediate success and perfection. I had more problems with the silicon mold and wax process than with the molten hot bronze work. Eventually a few mixed wood and bronze sculptures begin to appear. They did look like they could swim or fly. Finely a bucket list moment appeared. Two months after one of my larger wood and bronze sculptures was displayed at a woodturning symposium, someone I barely knew called on the telephone and purchased it. That reinforced my belief that I could create artistic sculptures people liked and would pay a fair price for it. The challenge of turning rather ordinary pieces of wood into beautiful unique bronze enhanced sculptures keeps me motivated. It is my intention to continue having a blast creating more of them. I hope you will enjoy them too.
