The Skinny:

What I do, What I've done...

2011-Present

Owner, Graeter Art Gallery

131 NW 2nd Ave
Portland, Oregon 97209
http://www.graeterartgallery.com
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Graeter Art Gallery proudly represents the contemporary outsider, visionary, brut and street-art inspired artwork of Portland, national and international artists.

Our mission is to bring our gallery artists creative purpose to the national and international limelight, while serving as a trusted and top gallery destination for patrons, collectors and artists both locally and abroad.

Located in the Historic Merchant Hotel, the Graeter Art Gallery and Wine Bar stands as a new Portland Contemporary Art gallery model.

Follow the moves of Graeter Art Gallery!

--> FB: Graeter Art Rep
--> FB: Graeter Art Gallery
--> Twitter: Graeter Gallery  

2009-2011

Owner, graeterartrep

Graeter Art Rep is John Graeter's art firm specializing in artist representation, art consulting and advising and curatorial services. For more info, please contact John: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Graeter Art Rep is located at 107 SE Washington Street, Portland, Oregon, 97214.

Follow the action and stay in touch by clicking on the Facebook and Twitter links below!

 2008-2010

Executive Director, Co-Founder of Portland City Art

"The vision of Portland City Art is to bring together artists, patrons and the greater public in engaging urban art venues, alternative to those found in traditional galleries.

The mission of Portland City Art is to serve the art community of Portland, by working with a diverse demographic of local and national emerging and established artists, in a capacity that positively facilitates the growth of their individual career paths and goals."

2000 -current

Working Artist!

Artist Statement



"I am inspired from looking out my window and seeing a grey squirrel eating a banana peel mayonnaise torpedo on a neighbors front porch with a tow truck on fire across the street. I am inspired from reading the daily news and then talking to people on the corner and getting the other daily news from the streets.

I use Sumi ink, spray paint, oil stick, and acrylic for mediums, and paint almost exclusively on recycled doors or scraps of wood. My signature squiggly lines come from outer space. It's alien graffiti language I guess. It came to me one night six years ago in New Mexico while wildin' out on a twenty foot charcoal and paper mural. The titles of these painting are their primary purpose. The actual painting comes second.

 I also use found objects or recycled trash to create 3-D Dadaist combines and political, social, cultural or spontaneous reflections about this most insane, beautiful,  and fiendish world.

I love intangible, split-second moments in time, the ones which are forgotten, dismissed, or overlooked because they are too immediately abstract or absurd. ie: seeing some guy crossing the street and suddenly realizing that i want to bite a brick for ten hours straight while Linda Rhonstat belches constantly in a d minor tremelo to Roy Nagin whose on his knees, dressing red ants for the highschool prom. I try to express these moments in my art. I add humor  and absurdity to make sense out of and address such issues.

Inspiration: Dada, punk rock, 1970's NY subway walls, street art and graff, taoism, old vinyl jazz and hip-hop, honky-tonkin' and old country, love and sex, old typewriters, old leather briefcases, 80'd pop-culture, polotikin' coffee and frieks in creeks.
Thanks!
JG



"every night is some experience
out of a draught style of subordinate nolan ryan
microbial plastic ware;
when you take a dumpy dumper
in the public park
behind my house
it really
turns me on and gets me going:
you are so bleached out and yee-haw
sweet,
there is no way to saw directly
through a cashiers check
no matter the number of swine,
no matter
your corvette h'ourderve in the caspian sea."
-ancient dada proverb"