Chaz John’s (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, Mississippi Band Choctaw, European) latest works explore the characters, stories, and archetypes that crisscross generations and cultures.
Santa Fe, New Mexico | chazjohnart.com | @_chaz.john_ | represented by Smoke the Moon
“I like stories; I like a good yarn, you know?” says Chaz John, when I ask him about the characters and symbols that pepper his work. His practice pierces through histories, pulling together archetypes, visual styles, and material references across cultures and moments—frequently with a dose of humor and an easy ability to keep even the loftiest of ideas down to earth.
John (Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, Mississippi Band Choctaw, European) grew up in Topeka, Kansas, and credits his high school art teacher and classes with Bob Ault, a respected art therapist, with transforming his childhood love of drawing into an art school–track pursuit. Following stints in Chicago, Hawaii, and elsewhere, John landed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, earning his BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2019. This year, he was awarded a prestigious Creative Capital grant.
The artist has built a diverse body of work in painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance. While his 2019 series REZ DOGS picks apart false art-historical hierarchies, elevating the lowly rez dog via Victorian-era styling, his series Manifest Destiny’s Child uses icons, pop culture, and his own brand of irreverent cheek to pick apart myths of the “American Frontier.”
Lately, John has turned his attention to dream imagery and research into Jungian archetypes. “I realized how Indigenous it is, how they’re trying to think,” John says of his reading of Jungian scholars. “It’s like they’ve come across the collective unconscious and connections through archetypes and characters and stories—but Native and Indigenous people have been thinking that way forever.”
Hare Cycle #13 is a zine John wrote telling the story of the Winnebago spirit of gambling, a trickster figure he says is akin to a fallen angel. For John, gambling is one of these stories that crisscrosses histories and has touched all cultures, including the Native experience, and including his own: he dedicates this story to his grandfather, who was good at gambling to the point of getting expelled from bingo for winning too much.
“Maybe he just had that spirit in him,” John muses. “There is a picture of me and him at Chuck E. Cheese, which is like a child casino, so these things just carry on. I think that is how history lives on through us, and these characters live on through us. They’re always around, as long as people are around.”
John will have an exhibition at Smoke the Moon in Santa Fe, opening on August 16, 2024.
