John P. Gardiner is a Maine-based artist and maker, currently residing in the coastal town of Bath, though he spends most of his time in Portland teaching the next generation of aspiring woodworkers as a member of Maine College of Art & Design’s Woodworking and Furniture Design Studios. Although John has called Maine home for the majority of his life, he was born in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. He immigrated to the United States in 1986 and has spent time living in the suburbs of Chicago, San Diego, and Boston. John holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Fine Art, in Woodworking and Furniture Design and Studio Art, respectively, both from Maine College of Art & Design. John’s work spans a spectrum from fine furniture and studio crafts to larger-scale sculptural work and installations. Through the use of both traditional and digital fabrication techniques, his work investigates intersections of Art, Craft, Technology, Science, and Science Fiction. The unknown future of the human race, as well as our asymbiotic relationship with planet Earth, are often at the conceptual core of his work. Most recently in the Studio, Gardiner has been creating abstracted works of marquetry, centered around the hyperobjectivity of time travel and black holes.
Gardiner’s work has been featured at the ICA at Maine College of Art & Design, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the UMVA Gallery in Portland, The George Marshall Store Gallery in York, The Messler Gallery at the Center For Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, First Street Gallery in New York City, and The Boston Young Contemporaries Exhibition at Boston University. John was also featured in a 2012 publication by Brigitte Martin titled Humor in Craft and has received multiple Project Grants from the Maine Arts Commission. John has attended residencies and workshops at Hewnoaks Artist Colony in Lovell, Maine, the Baie St. Marie Residency in Nova Scotia, Canada, and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
Instagram: @john.p.gardiner