M.F.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ('90); Graduate study in Painting and Drawing, University of Texas at San Antonio ('83 - '84). Taught: School of The Art Institute of Chicago ('91 - '94); Appalachian State University ('94 - '95); Penland School of Crafts ('00, '03), Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium ('04). Selected exhibitions: "Golden Daze," Street Level Gallery, Chicago, IL ('05); "John Schulz: Travel by Water Long Ago," Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee, Belgium ('04); "Altered States: Printmaking After Technology," Suburban Fine Arts Center, Highland Park, IL ('04); "Six Printmakers," InterPrint international symposium, University of Connecticut, Storrs ('03), "Global Matrix," Wright State and Purdue Universities ('02), Playing by the Rules, Montserrat College of Art ('01); Sight/Insight, New York Public Library ('99); Mischief, I-Space Gallery, Chicago ('98); Prized Impressions: Gifts from the Print Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art ('97). Collections: Boston Public Library, New York Public Library, Purdue University Galleries, Rutgers University, University of Dallas.
Turning to generic images from first-aid manuals, intelligence tests and clip-art sheets, Schulz's work transforms common symbols and images from the "low" end of visual culture. Using chance operations and an ironic and illogical visual language, his work reveals aspects of the banal that are at once wryly humorous, strangely beautiful and vaguely threatening, conveying a sense of loss and psychic anxiety that reflects the uncertainty of contemporary life. "In the end, I hope to make something beautiful out of the insignificant, as in the rubber gloves and artichokes in the paintings of deChirico. I want my work to have a presence like furniture to which other meanings might be attached. A reviewer once spoke of my paintings as "essentially leaden and humorless." I found that to be a rather sensitive observation and took it as a compliment."
