Artist Statement
My eye is drawn to the physical world, how light and shadow play on surfaces, the way nature cycles between growth, decay, and renewal. I observe the beauty of imperfections, how objects change in varying light, and at the nexus where different surfaces meet. I have been inspired by these transformations my entire career.
The dimensions of my sculpture varies from small intimate experiences, to large pieces that interact with the environment. I prefer to work in steel, stone, wood, and paper, all of which allows me to explore my ideas. I begin with an idea and as it develops, it ultimately evolves and changes. This is the process that drives me.
My most recent outdoor sculpture is “Furrow.” It was inspired by the plowed farm fields on the North Fork of Long Island. I was attracted to the way light moved across the surfaces of the plowed earth, and by the vanishing points of each row in the distant fields. It is my hope that as people observe similar fields, they may appreciate nature’s forms and abstractions—its weight and the play of light and that when they view any of my works they see the world through a different eye.
Critics Statements
"What IS A Landscape" Cutchogue Free Library ,Curator Amei Wallach
"John Wittenberg took his hint from one of the furrowed fields that bracket winter on the North Fork. He was transfixed by how the light landed and where, how it defined the clods of earth that plows detached and weather disturbed. His view is up close and it is personal. He’ll single out one section of one furrow in all its complexity of changing shape and surface, joining shards of wood into life-sized and larger sculptures that hide the intricacy of their construction. The minimal simplicity of both his sculpture and his paper pulp creations is deceptive. They emulate powerful forces. They probe the processes by which nature acts and is acted upon. He makes handmade paper that converts two dimensions into three, often adding something from nature – stones, perhaps, mica – and then he watches what happens, and thinks about it, and lets nature take its course."
Amei Wallach