Red Lodge Clay Center, Short-Term Resident (ASPN) 2019, Long-Term Resident 2019-2021, Short-Term Resident 2022
Born in a Mexican-American family, Jon Green or Juan Verde, is entertained by the absurd nature of the American-Dream, as it relates to his identity as a second-generation Chicano. He completed his BFA at the University of Montana with a minor in Art History, and worked as a studio assistant for Julia Galloway, Casey Zablocki, and Anton Alvarez. Green has completed Residencies at Red Lodge Clay Center, Medalta Clay District, Morean Center for Clay and Clay Art Center in Port Chester, NY.
Jon Green, or Juan Verde, is currently a Penland Core Fellow where his work continues to pay homage to the craftspeople and merging customs of the Americas through emphasizing objects and ornamentation. Currently, Juan is excited to explore a diverse range of Mestizo visual histories, and Latin American craft traditions, and incorporate that into a new cohesive body of work.
I explore the fragile boundaries of my blurred identity within the diverse multi- ethnic background of the Americas. I exist in this in-between space, both and neither, Mexican and American. My studio practice is explained as both a question and a statement; a curiosity of my ethnic identity and a pride in my Mexican-American heritage. Decorative patterning and bright colors are sourced from Mestizo prints of colonial Latin-America to represent the convergence of ethnic and cultural ideas. This history is paired with personal symbolism and humor that subverts traditional expectations of Latino Communities.
This work represents a personal narrative as a second-generation Chicano, and is an homage to the elaborate and diverse Latin American Craft-traditions before and after colonization.