John Seubert

b. 1958, Chicago, IL

In the early Nineties, John Seubert was living in a former hotel in a high-rise building on St. James Place in Chicago.  The apartment was tiny, as hotel rooms tend to be, and clad with paper-thin walls allowing sound to pass from one apartment to the other.  At the time, John’s artwork consisted of pounding copper sheets into tables which was a noisy endeavor to say the least.  Following several noise complaints from the neighbors, John had a dream that he was living in a ramshackle house but with plenty of room to work and no attached neighbors.  The following day after lunching at the McDonalds in Lincoln Park, John wandered the neighborhood a came upon a shabby, falling-down old Victorian house.  He located the real estate agent, put in an offer, and weeks later was pushing a shopping cart full of his belongings to his new home. 

 This 144-year-old Painted Lady provided a blank canvas for this inimitable artist.  For many years the house remained so empty that John was able to ride his Japanese fold up bike throughout the 1st floor.  “Some people want to have sex in every room, I’ve made art in every room,” says John casually when asked in which room he keeps his studio.  The original bumpy-lumpy plaster walls and roly-poly hardwood floors have had their influence on his artwork and vice versa; the artist constantly evolves and devolves with his living environment.  Over the years, John has experimented with numerous art forms:  welding, ceramics, photography, jewelry making, painting, and sculpture of various kinds.  The minute a medium becomes tedious, he drops it and moves on.  Until he rediscovers his own work in the place where he’d first set it aside in his home.  One thing leads to another and back again.