Biography of:
John Hoover
|
John Hoover was born 1919 in Cordova, Alaska. His Aleut mother, Ann Sarakovikoff was from Unga, which is in the Sumigan Islands of Alaska. When her father died she was sent to an orphanage in Unalaska run by missionaries and then loaned to a family to do their menial tasks. At age seventeen she heard her mother was on Kodiak Island sick with tuberculosis. Ann went to Kodiak Island to care for her mother until she died that same year. Ann Sarakovikoff was married to John's dad until he died of appendicitis on the Gulf of Alaska. John was only five years old when his father Jake Hoover died.
Several years later he met a Russian Cossack named Dave Kozachuk who had fled from Russia; first to New York and later traveled to Alaska. He was a kind man and a good father figure to John.
Growing up; John split his time between fishing for salmon and attending school where he excelled in sports and loved art. He also loved to watch his older sister draw. His first drawings and paintings were of the scenes that surrounded him; mountains, glaciers, trees, lakes and the sea. He then began painting fishing boats and fishing scenes.
After high school John fished more seriously and made a good living. Next came WWII, where he spent three years running Army boats in the Aleutian Islands.
After marrying and starting a family, John eventually moved away from Cordova down to Washington State where he could go to Art School and learn more painting technique. At this time he grew interested in Northwest Coast Art. He began researching many different myths and legends. His first works of wood were lightly carved but mostly painted.
He then began building boats. Boat construction uses curved pieces of wood, nothing is straight, and he found himself doing much shaping and carving. In this way he began carving in his art and the pieces became much less painted and much more carved.
He is now recognized as an innovator of contemporary Indian Art, and in so doing has developed a style, all his own which is recognized around the world. In Santa Fe N.M., which is the center of Native American Art, John is named an innovator along with as small group of other great names. He is leaving his mark on our world.
Hoover gathers fragments of his culture and stretches them in to whole images in his art. His work, a blend of shamanism, sea birds, and animals, creates a modern myth based on his heritage. His unique style, which differs from traditional Northwest Coast native art, can be attributed to how little of his Aleut culture remains from him to draw upon.
In the early sixties Hoover, because interested in sculpturing, and started carving two-dimensional plaques in the traditional Northwest Coast style. He found the style unsatisfying and began experimenting with the form. His first major sculpture show was at the Collectors Gallery in Bellevue, WA. The forty-one piece exhibition was purchased by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. All but three pieces became part of the Bureau's permanent collection, the other three sculptures were given as gifts to visiting dignitaries by President Lydon Johnson.
Hoover's sculptures have since been exhibited all over the world, receiving numerous awards and recognitions, and can be found in many permanent collections around the United States.
|
HEARD MUSEUM
