| To
date, New York artist John Eric Byers has exhibited his functional and
non-functional
artwork in
twenty four solo exhibitions and over one hundred group exhibitions. His
works
have been honored
by numerous awards and grants, including a Louis Comfort Tiffany
Foundation Award and two New York Foundation of the Arts Awards. His works
are
in the permanent collection of several museums, including the Museum of
Arts &
Design, New York, NY and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington,
D.C. In 2004, the Fuller Art Museum, Brockton, MA, honored him with a
mid-career
survey. Since 2008, he has focused his primary attention on his incised
and
carved paintings. His paintings are surface explorations in repetition,
line, shape
and color. Art critic John Perreault has written " he is offering
a new perspective on
the dialogue between the optical and the tactile."
Some comments on his work:
Byers is not burdened by the current,
neoacademic stranglehold on painting...
He is offering a new perspective on the dialogue between the optical and
the tactile. <more>
John Perreault
Art Critic
He marries a painters attention to surface with a craftsman's devotion...
A maker of
art both stringent and playful, art that references history and modernism.
Cate Mcquaid
Boston Globe
...his magnificent building blocks of design, the sphere and ellipse,
circle, square,
cylinder and rectangle. Straightforward and solid, in Byers' skillful
hands they
serve as large canvases on which he projects mesmerizing carved and painted
patterns.
Jeannine Falino
American Craft
John Eric Byers performs feats of legerdemain with every piece he creates.
Like
any master, Byers' hides his painstaking labor, and his finished work
appears to
have been accomplished easily, even playfully.
Ursula Ilse - Neuman,
Curator
Museum of Arts and Design
They leave an indelible, enduring impression. As the twist on the old
familiar
anecdote goes, "once you have seen one, well, you have only seen
one."
Gretchen Keyworth
Fuller Craft Museum
The carved, patterned surfaces add considerable interest to his simplified
forms,
as does his exquisite attention to detail...
Grace Glueck
New York Times
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