john sunderland

Profile

John is a Yorkshireman from England living and working in New York Ciity. He originally trained as a graphic designer and started his career in England as an animator and art-director for television and feature films. He is the co-owner of two well known cafe bars in New York, both called ‘Life Cafe’, the oldest being in the East Village of Manhattan and the other in the midst of the ‘Arts Colony’ of Bushwick, Brooklyn. John currently writes, fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Curates the monthly art exhibits at his 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 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 design and build for the Jorvik Viking Centre in the early 1980’s, in York, England. Since then he has worked around the world completing 23 award-winning design-and-builds and 130 consultancies for exhibitions and museums. He became famous in the UK especially for his work in developing Popularism in Museums.

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.

Should you be 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, living on beautiful Cape Cod for 6 years before relocating to New York City in 2004 to live with his new wife and partner (Kathy Life). Besides continuing with design work he now co-owns with her two famous ‘bohemian’ cafes, both called Life Cafe. The original is located on Tompkins Square Park in the East Village of Manhattan and the other in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

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 other ways that he could contribute to the spirit of the Cafes. He came up with an idea based on the menus.
So many things in the menus sounded strange and new to him that he came up with the notion of ‘Great Misunderstood Menu Items’ and began, on a weekly basis to draw large murals in chalk on the walls of the cafe.
These became a great success, but after a while it became apparent it was a huge waste to have the murals be forever rubbed off, indeed destroyed, each week to make way for the next. So he changed his approach and started drawing with pastels on black paper and put those up on the cafe walls instead. The name of the project changed to ‘The Life Cafe Picture Riddle’.

Now each week two new illustrations based on items in the cafe menus appear on each of the cafe’s walls. It’s a competition, and every week people come in to attempt to work out what on earth the weird and sometimes wonderful drawings mean.
The prize is a bottle of champagne for those who answer correctly. But it seems that rather than to simply win a prize, people enter for the fun and challenge of coming up with the answer.

After 18 months (so far) the Picture Riddles have attracted a cult following. They’re so popular John’s decided to put them out here on this site to a wider public, complete with the answers. So if you want to work out the answer for yourself don’t look at the bottom of the frame!

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, poster and t-shirts.

John still works internationally as a Consultant Concept Designer and producesfor commission, illustration, portraiture and cartoon character design. He is proficient in utilizing many media, such as watercolor, graphite, acrylic and oils and is available for commercial, domestic and personal commissions.

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