Sculptor and printmaker John Buck is the St. Nick of the art world, without the beard or the belly. Buck takes childhood things and elevates them. Each piece of his intricate and complicated wood blocks is hand carved and then fit together perfectly, forming giant jigsaw puzzles. They will become prints or rubbings – a little more complex than the ones kids do in kindergarten, but the concept is the same. His larger-than-life wood sculptures are like huge, sophisticated Tinker Toys that he has rigged up to move, and the carved-wood wall panels are reminiscent of shadow boxes filled with shapes and memories that tickle the imagination.

Buck says he’s not an engineer, he just likes “figuring things out.” His 4,000-square-foot studio/workshop outside of Bozeman, Montana, is a fantastic place that so tells the story of one man’s life and work. He is an unpretentious man with eclectic tastes who loves collecting stuff – from ideas to antlers, and he has a lot of both. Stuffed animal heads are mounted on one wall, dozens and dozens of paint jars filled with every powdered pigment imaginable fill more than a half dozen shelves, paintbrushes hang close by and chisels are lined up like soldiers. A restored band saw sits in one corner, an old sleigh is filled with reindeer antlers, and carved body parts are piled up on tables and in bins. Tramp art frames hang on the walls, and tables are cluttered with all kinds of objects that have caught the artist’s eye. A large, very worn leather chair sits in the middle of the main studio and wood shavings are scattered across the floor. This is the place where Buck lets his imagination go wild and the resulting work is like opening the perfect present on Christmas morning.

Buck came to wood carving almost by accident.  His father was a wood carver and his grandfather was a carpenter and cabinetmaker, but Buck never considered it until graduate school. At the time he was using found materials to make his sculpture, but when he went to England for a semester, finding stuff to work with became more difficult.

“I couldn’t go out and raid people’s yards, so the school bought me a pile of wood,” Buck says. “Working with wood was familiar to me because of my father and I realized pretty quickly that you could do a lot of things on the surface of pine. There were endless possibilities, but I spent a few years working with it before I realized that I was actually really involved.”

Buck’s father may have introduced him to woodcarving, but it was his support that meant more to John. As a young man his father enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute, but had to drop out. “It was during the Depression, and he just couldn’t afford it,” John says. “He never did go back, but when I showed interest in art, he decided that was something he could support. I had friends in art school that did not have the support of their parents and it was hard. So that was a big thing from my Dad – his support.”

Buck was born and raised in Ames, Iowa. He grew up hunting and fishing with his father. The summer job was de-tasseling corn for 45 cents an hour. “It was a good job,” John laughs. “Just about the only thing available for a kid.”

Ames was peaceful and maybe a little too quiet. “Iowa is the place everybody leaves,” he says. “There was this sense of inevitability that you were going to have to go someplace else because you had just about enough of the peace and quiet.”

After high school, that’s exactly what John did. He went to college at the Art Institute in Kansas City, and then headed to California for his graduate work. He started at Stanford, but hated it so much he dropped out and worked in a factory for a year before he could get into the University of California at Davis. It was fate. Not only did he find his artistic path; he also found the love of his life.

It was a heady time at Davis. The school had put together one of the finest faculties around with such notable names as Manual Neri, Robert Arneson, Wayne Thiebaud, William Wiley and Roy De Forest, who ended up being a lifelong mentor and one of Buck’s best friends.

Because the faculty was so strong, Davis (which is about 10 miles outside of Sacramento) was also attracting top students. One in particular caught John’s eye. Debbie was also an art student who would later become an extremely successful artist known to the world as Deborah Butterfield. They fell in love and embarked on parallel careers.

The move to Montana was more about economics than anything else. With the help of family, they bought a house and five acres of land. Initially, they both shared the studio John now occupies. John taught at Montana State for more than a decade until he couldn’t stand the politics anymore. “I loved teaching kids, but when I wasn’t teaching I wanted to work on my own stuff, and university obligations wouldn’t allow you to do it,” he says.

Buck still goes back to the classroom occasionally. He takes a bunch of wood blacks into the local elementary schools in Bozeman and gives the kids a lesson in woodcarving.

John and Debbie have two children of their own. Having a family put an end to Buck’s hunting and fishing. “It wasn’t a philosophical decision; it was about time,” he says. “With two kids I just couldn’t leave the house for hours and hours.”

He does have a little pond next to their house that he stocks with fish every year, but for most part he feeds the fish and lets them be. The house, like his studio, is full of ollectibles and great art. A life-sized stuffed white elk stands guard in the bedroom, a Roy De Forest hangs in the dining room, one of Buck’s carved wall panels takes up most of one wall in the pool table room and a small, haunting painting of a young man hangs on the opposite wall. It’s a self-portrait done by John’s youngest son, who clearly showed talent early on.  Both sons are in college studying art, something John supports but worries about because he knows how tough it can be. He and Debbie have been lucky. They have done well.

Over the years, Debbie has become known for her horse sculptures, and John for his woodprints and kinetic sculptures. Whenever they achieved a little bit of success, they added acreage to their spread in Big Sky country, eventually building another studio and equestrian center. In total they have about 350 acres.

John loves Montana but admits the winters can be long and lonely. “There is a period of time around the middle of December when the sky turns to iron and it comes down heavy and stays there. It’s so cold, Debbie can’t even ride,” he says. So the two artists now spend several months in Hawaii every winter, where they have a hilltop home overlooking the ocean. This year they finished building studios there, as well.

Jelutong is the type of soft wood that is John’s favorite. He gets it from a guy in Long Beach. “Its kind of a thing of the past,” John says. “The wood has a long history. It was used in pattern making, furniture, crown molding but so much of that industry has gone to plastic. You don’t see it so much anymore, but I like it. It’s a soft wood so I can carve all day long and my hands don’t feel worn out.”

John has a slew of tools but his two favorites are the band saw from the 1800’s and a small chisel from Japan. The 1868 saw is fully restored and functional. John and his brother rebuilt it and it looks brand new. They added some guards for safety but other than that it is exactly the machine it was a century and half ago. John loves to show it off. John calls it his pride and joy. The chisel on the other hand is a simple unassuming tool that seems to mesh perfectly with the artist’s hand. John doesn’t buff or polish his pieces. The gouges on the wood are clearly visible giving his work an organic rawness that somehow works with the sophisticated subject matter.

Buck is, at his core, a storyteller. There is always a narrative – it may not be obvious but it is there. One woodblock print, based loosely on Mesopotamia, is also a metaphorical statement on the current administration in Washington. Another piece was inspired by a story in Japan about women tossing their fans into the river to form a beautiful floating piece of art. And his standing sculptures seem to ask the viewer to consider the delicate balance between the human form and the mechanical world.  All of this makes the art intellectual but it works on a basic emotional level as well.

Buck is as dedicated to the process as he is to the final piece. He loves to tinker. He insists everything he does is trial and error,  and spends hours in his studio moving from one project to another. It is his sanctuary and where he finds peace. He seems to be one those rare artists without anxiety.

“Not true,” he says. “I have ‘the worry’ but I live so far from the angst creating environment. I’m up here saying ‘life is short. I’m going to enjoy the way things are.’ I’ve managed to find defenses against the darkness because it’s there.”

He lives the lesson taught by his dear friend and mentor Roy De Forest, who died last year. “He was a wonderful, supportive guy,” Buck says. “He was such a great inspiration because no matter what happened in his life he worked. I took his example to heart and I follow it. I work every day and I don’t see any reason to ever stop.”

Written by: Erin Clark

ARTWORKS Magazine – Summer 2008