John Powers

Burning House, 2026

Artist statement

In 2022, within the space of a few months, my grandmother died, my mother died, and my mother’s house—my childhood home, containing nearly all of her possessions—burned to the ground. As I tried to make sense of these losses, I encountered the writing of Pico Iyer and his own reflections on loss, grief, and the role that fire played in his life.

I was particularly struck by his acknowledgement that fire is neither good nor bad. It simply is. Fire can be tremendously destructive, but it is equally generative: a source of warmth, energy, and transformation. I returned repeatedly to a haiku by the samurai and poet Mizuta Masahide, often cited by Iyer:

Since my house burned down.
I now own a better view
of the rising moon.

Burning Hour is one work in a series that endeavors to engage that spirit of radical acceptance, using fire as a symbol to consider loss, transformation, and acceptance. Here, fire exists within a continuous ring: destructive and generative, threatening and luminous, without clear beginning or end. The work attempts to inhabit these contradictions rather than resolve them. It is a gesture to embrace the wonder of even existing at all alongside the clarity that loss can bring.

​Artist bio

John Douglas Powers received his M.F.A. in sculpture (with distinction) from The University of Georgia and a B.A. in art history from Vanderbilt University. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Virginia A Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship. His sculptural work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art, The MIT Museum, The Mariana Kistler Beach Museum of Art, The Huntsville Museum of Art, The Wiregrass Museum of Art, The European Cultural Center, Il Museo Storico della Citta Lecce, The Gadsden Museum of Art, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Brenda Taylor Gallery, The Vero Beach Museum of Art and Cue Art Foundation.

Powers currently lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee where he is faculty in the University of Tennessee School of Art.