Quick Facts
SagittariusBiography
John K. Grande (born 11 December 1954) is a Canadian author, poet, essayist and curator. He has authored essays for some 40 books, which have appeared in translation in Spanish, French, Czech, Hungarian, Korean and German. His catalogues and articles have appeared in many other languages.
Work
John K. Grande has contributed extensively to the Canadian and international arts communities over the past 30 years. Specializing in art and ecology his publications include, he's also known for his activities in and surrounding art involved with nature. He has also created poetry on these themes.
Earth Art
Grande has curated Earth Art, Eco-Art and Art and Nature shows that are an extension to his writings. Early shows included Sorel, Quebec; Sackville, New Brunswick and then the Royal Botanical Gardens (Ontario), which he used to express therelation between nature and art, which he has criticized as being seldom integrated into contemporary art.
He then went on to curate Eco-Art in various locations around the world, including Finlandand Kathy Venter: Life in Toronto in 2013, followed by Nature Art Spring in Meran; Italy, 2015.
More recently he curated the international category of Small Gestures at the Kunsthalle, known as Mucsarnok in Budapest, Hungary in 2016. He also had a workshop at the 2018 Festival for Earth in Venice and participated at the Symposium The Chimney, Brooklyn, NYC in September 2018. He then curated an exhibition in Poland in 2019.
Awards
In 2010 John Grande received an Honour Award from the Colorado chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in the field of Research and Communication for collaboration with Alan Sonfist. The project, featured in Public Art Review where Grande wrote The Lay of Land Art, was undertaken at Snowmass, Colorado on the golf course. Burned trees from forest fires were placed in an assemblage on the golf course. The work is now in a Chicago Museum Collection.
Prix Lison Dubreuil, 1994 for Which Public? Whose Art?
Garden Exhibition of the Year 2015, Canadian Garden Council Awards, for Pan Am Earth Art show curated by John K. Grande.
Honorary Doctorate at Pécs Hungary 2015