John K Crockett-Person is a self-taught mixed-media ceramic artist whose work bridges figurative sculpture, woodland creatures, and a lifelong fascination with storytelling.
Born in Tokyo and raised throughout Michigan, John’s creative foundations were laid early, shaped by frequent moves, poverty, and a deep imaginative life fed by fairytales, time spent in the woods and exploring abandoned places.
These early experiences continue to echo into his work. His artistic direction began over the two decades he lived in Washington State while raising four children, navigating major life changes, and continually reinventing his studio direction to accommodate.
During that time John’s practice expanded from ceramics to include painting, abstract work, puppetry, and a range of unconventional approaches inspired by years of experimentation that all converged into the mixed media approach he’s known for today.
During the four years he lived in Iowa, he built three bodies of work:
Into The Glimmerwood, Willdlings, and Dryads, before family matters brought him back to the Pacific Northwest.
John’s sculptures often emerge at the intersection of the natural and the imaginative, blending a variety of materials with fired clay to create figures that feel ancient, newly discovered or half-remembered. His practice reflects both a maker’s curiosity and a sense of wonder, shaped by his childhood experiences while interacting with his children and engaging with community as a place of self-reflection and transformation.
Now based in Astoria, John is committed to public accessibility while continuing to develop a practice that invites audiences into encounters with the strange and the mythic rooted in the belief that art can reawaken and heal our ability to see the world with curiosity and a personal narrative.
Artist's Statement
My work emerges from a lifelong fascination with fairytales, forests, and the fragile creatures that live in the imagination. Raised in the woods of Michigan, I first sculpted figures from homemade air-dry clay, sticks, paper, and found objects. I discovered at a young age that materials could carry stories, and that creativity and resilience often share the same roots.
That spirit continues in my mixed-media practice. I work across clay, resin, wood, paint and paper. Each medium influences the next because no single material can contain the whole wildness of a dream. Through sculpting, layering, and intuitive construction, surfaces collaborate into forms that feel unearthed, like relics returned from a story that once happened. Today, I create mixed-media sculptures, masks, creatures, and ceramic forms that draw upon folklore, childhood creativity, and the quiet strangeness of the natural world.
These hybrid beings occupy thresholds: between wildness and home, imagination and memory, childhood and adulthood. I’m drawn to the moment before a myth is born, when a viewer encounters a figure and begins to create their own narrative. My goal is to craft objects that opena small doorway into wonder, alive with the possibility that the world is more enchanted than it seems.