Jon Haddock's work uses doll-like figures to recreate a violent scene from Francis Ford Coppola's movie classic, The Godfather. It is his attempt to control the violence and tragic events he witnesses in the world around him. Events that are beyond his ability to affect. To quote Jon Haddock, "We can't control it, but somehow we want to try." This piece, which the artist has been working on since last May, uses art to better see our frustrations and to express the way we feel.

Art is a medium that can describe, or allow us to escape, actual violence that surrounds us. We can use it to distinguish between fact and fiction, attempting to lessen the blows of reality. Recent news coverage shows individuals who could only use art as a vocabulary in which to express the terror they felt and observed: "It looked like a Hollywood effect," "Felt like something out of the movie Armageddon," "I feel like I am in a bad movie." Art is a kind of contained environment in which we can consider ideas and allow feelings. Haddock's work, based in fiction, takes on new meaning in the context of the present reality.

Jon Haddock received a BFA in Painting from Arizona State University in 1986 and went on to receive a MFA and MA from the University of Iowa. His work has been included in the exhibitions: Byte-bi-Byte, Howard House, Seattle, WA; Phoenix Triennial, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Cyborg Manifesto, or The Joy of Artifice, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; BitStreams, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Screenshots, ASU Art Museum, Tempe, AZ; Modifications, Roberts and Tilton, Los Angeles, CA; Homemade, Howard House, Seattle, WA; Robot Prince, Drewlowe Gallery, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA; Not There, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Too Small (To Stand on Their Own), Lead Gallery Annex, Seattle, WA; R.K. Merritt/Jon Haddock, Ashtabula Art Center, Ashtabula, OH; Recent Drawings: Works by Regional Graduates 1991, Paul Watkins Gallery, Winona State University, Winona, MN; MFA Thesis Exhibition, Museum of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA; TEH, Johnson County Arts Center, Iowa City, IA; Three Perfectly Normal People Behaving in a Perfectly Normal Fashion, Drewlowe Gallery, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA; and Evil Twin, Bookstore Gallery, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.

Contact artist Jon Haddock with questions about his work for
nooks and crannies by e-mail at jonhaddocknooksandcrannies@hotmail.com

John D. Spiak
Curatorial Museum Specialist
Arizona State University Art Museum