Contact: John D. Antone – ja6509@aol.com

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:

My sculpture is visual poetry.

Dreams interest me and beauty found in nature.

Houses are an open door to the imagination.

Art stops time.

What are we doing here? Flying.

John D. Antone

CURATOR’S STATEMENT:

In order to convey his artistic message, John D. Antone uses the universal language of symbols. Let me touch on just a few. The Tree, this inspiring “Arbor Vitae”, is a symbol of life, perpetually evolving and ascending towards the sky. However, it is also a symbol of death and rebirth. I could easily imagine that in Antone’s sculpture the tree formally represents the vertical, as it symbolically represents he human being, man. The house is an image of the universe: it is the center of the world; it is a temple, it is also a female symbol associated with shelter; it is the opposite of the tree or its compliment. The house-nest on a branch – a symbol of the victory of life and the permanence of love, also at a time when all hope is lost – is a powerful symbol of faith in man and basic human values. A house without windows represents isolation, which can be increasingly applied to contemporary man. The bird defines the relation between sky and earth; it is the symbol of the soul, the mediator between the earth and the sky. The bird also acts as a symbol of freedom because of the belief that the soul, once freed from the body, takes on the form of a bird. Still birds can represent the desire for freedom. The moon is a very clear symbol of transformation and growth, the symbol of dreams and the unconscious as well as night.  — Breda Skrjanec, Curator, International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia