John Well-Off-Man, a member of the Chippewa-Cree tribe, was born in Havre, Montana and raised in Havre and on the Rocky Boy Reservation. He received his diploma in photography from Ohio Visual Art Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio in 1978. He studied printmaking at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico and received his Associate of Fine Arts degree in 1990. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts degree from the University of Montana in 2005 and received his Master of Arts in Fine Arts, Integrated Arts and Education from UM's Creative Pulse Program, in 2007. John Well-Off-Man worked as a Photographer/Film Developer for Instructional Media Services at University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. During this time he also produced exhibits for the Missoula Historical Society and the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library of the University of Montana. He produced the visual exhibit "Their Eyes Tell Everything," a photo-history of the Montana Chippewa-Cree with a grant from the Montana Committee for the Humanities. This exhibit is now in the permanent collection of the Montana Museum of Art & Culture.
He was project director of the youth photo project "Photography, An Image of Each Other." The Montana Committee for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanties, and A Territory Resource have funded this cross cultural awareness program.
John Well-Off-Man's artworks are exhibited nationally and internationally and are included in the permanent collection of the Montana Museum of Art & Culture at The University of Montana, Missoula, Montana and the Westphalian State Museum of Natural History in Münster, Germany. In 2009, he received a one month Ford Foundation artist residency award at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana. John has a printmaking studio in Bentonville, Arkansas.
I consider myself a thoroughly modern artist in that I am constantly seeking new ways of expression.
I've been creating photos most of my life, printmaking is one of my favorite media. Problem solving involved in the different printmaking processes is like knowing how to read a negative, or a good black and white image - you know when you have found happiness. Being a photographer and printmaker I have always considered photography an important component of the printmaking process.
John Well-Off-Man