john sunderland

Profile

Age: 59
City: New York
Country: United States

Joined: Oct 2008

John is a Yorkshireman from England living and working in New York Ciity. He originally trained as a graphic designer and started his career as an animator and art-director for television and feature films, before going on to design ‘new-wave’ museums n England and abroad.
Today he is also the co-owner of two well known cafe restaurants in New York, both called ‘Life Cafe’, the oldest being in the East Village of Manhattan ( the cafe is featured in the musical RENT) and the other is situated in the heart of the ‘Arts Colony’ of Bushwick, Brooklyn.

John currently writes, fiction, non-fiction (along with his wife Kathy) and poetry, and produces original artwork which he exhibits as Cafe Menu Riddles each week.
He also curates monthly art exhibits at the cafes and internationally is currently involved with a major project for the Glastonbury Music and Arts Festival, in the U.K..

In the late 1970’s, as an animator, he created the cartoon character “Dusty Bin” for the English smash hit TV game show ‘3-2-1’, before going on to make two feature films with the comedian Kenny Everett.

Then came a big break when he was commissioned as Project Designer for the development of the Jorvik Viking Centre, in York in the early 1980’s, England. This entirely new type of immersive exhibit attracted 13 million visitors before it was replaced in 2001.

Since 1984 he has worked around the world completing 23 award-winning design-and-builds and 130 consultancies for exhibitions and museums.
He became well known in the UK especially for his work in developing a new ‘visitor centric’ Popularism in Museums. How he and his colleagues managed to achieve this is contained in his memoir, ‘A Viking in my Dustbin’ which can be read in small installments on his writing site here on Red Bubble.

A collection of brochures from some of John’s major international museum and exhibition projects (from 1981- present) are shown on this site along with samples of his illustration and other design and art work.

If you are interested in finding out more about individual exhibitions and museums designed by John, leave a comment and he will respond. (Full creative archives exist for each project).

John moved to America permanently in 1998 and lived on beautiful Cape Cod for 6 years before relocating to New York City in 2004 to live with his new wife and partner (aka Kathy Life).

Once John became involved with the cafes, which were and still are very much a part of the art scene in NYC, he thought about ways he could contribute to the spirit of the Cafes and came up with an original idea based on the cafe menus.
So many items sounded strange and new to him that he came up with the notion of ‘Great Misunderstood Menu Items’ and began, to draw large murals in chalk on the walls of the cafe.
These were a great and popular success, but after a while it became apparent it was a huge waste to destroy the murals each week to make way for the next. So he changed his approach and started drawing in pastel on black paper and put those up on the cafe walls instead. The name of the project changed to ‘The Life Cafe Menu Picture Riddle’.

If you would like to own your own copy of the Picture Riddle series, you can currently purchase them from this site in the form of greeting cards, posters and t-shirts. Originals are also on sale direct from the artist.
(For originals please contact j.g.sunderland1@mac.com .

All work on this site, visual or written is
Copyright John Sunderland and is not for reproduction in any form without permission of the author/artist.