An Architect in a past life and a real estate development professional in the present - with a few curious side quests in between - John Gilbert’s baptism into the wellsprings of the zeitgeist can be traced back to the early 2000’s within the California East Bay. It was here that the well-seasoned melting pot of ripe sub-cultures, music, skateboarding, and teenage angst began its gravitational pull towards a life-long orbit within the ever-evolving realm of the creative arts. At times experimenting with technical stencil fabrication, analog photography, website creation, graphic design, and a wooden plank with four wheels, John eventually found himself along a more grounded (literally) career path within the built environment, eventually practicing architecture in San Francisco, Ecuador, and Boston. His design work as an Architect typically explores nuanced spatial arrangements, concept-driven building designs, and logic-based visual storytelling. Developing these styles helped to anchor John’s broader creative process and design language in a unique and engaging graphical format that is simultaneously consistent yet highly experimental.

Currently, John operates as a leader within the mixed-income real estate development realm, while occasionally consulting across various industries and serving as an adjunct instructor at Massachusetts-based institutions of higher education. Accordingly, his most personal creative inclinations tend to occur outside of his “corporate experience” - an invigorating breath of fresh air, so-to-speak.

John’s creative work presently operates within the realm of collage, where multifarious patterns and subject-matter from found obscurities of the analog format are cut, pasted, and reconfigured into unique patterns and visual commentaries. A baker’s dozen of “perspective shifters” explores a rule-based “variation on a theme” and has produced a series of thirteen highly dynamic visionary pieces. Other small-run series tend to explore an initial concept, or “parti”, eventually evolving into a final product underpinned by an organizing thought and/or statement. Each piece is composed of a myriad of underlying concepts and themes that slowly emerge upon deeper analysis and reflection, often speaking to the viewer in a language unique to their own personal interpretation.

John’s work is well-documented in process and is currently finding unique applications to mediums beyond printmaking alone. He is always seeking new opportunities to share and display it with wider audiences, as well as collaborate in ways that expand his creative horizons.

It is his personal belief that sometimes the act of showing what’s on your mind is more impactful than speaking it. Nonetheless, he’d be happy to discuss it verbally all the same.

While CMYK studios is currently geared towards the display of John’s work products, the framework is envisioned as a future launchpad for additional creatives working across a range of various mediums. For now, dig into some of the offerings, and perhaps you'll uncover a few tonics which you can slowly stir into the cocktail mixer of your soul.