Jon Bok

Jon Bok is a self-taught artist born and raised in Conneticut. Growing up on the east coast in the 60s, television was all about California - the Brady bunch, the partridge family, films, etc.  A seed was planted.  At age nineteen he set out in the general direction of the Golden State, hitchhiking at first but it didn’t take long for someone who picked him up to have some concern for his safety and bought him a bus ticket to Tucson.  After his arrival and spending six months living in a park and eating the free meals provided by various religious groups, a Franciscan monk bought him a bus ticket to Los Angeles.

After arriving to LA in the early 80s (“Melrose was still an adventure back then”) and finding work in a record store he began creating small art pieces out of scrap wood, bottle caps, and other found “trash” as well as beginning to dabble in furniture design.  Suddenly, without any warning, Bok lost his eye sight in a week’s time.  First in one eye and then in the other.  Ophthalmologists consulted were at a loss of what the diagnosis was and if they could even cure it.  Everyone who was consulted agreed that his condition was irreversible due to heavy scarring on the optic-nerve.  Disregarding the doctor’s advice he decided to consult with parapsychologists and a psychic advisors.  In a session with one whom he particularly liked, he remembers being able, under hypnosis, to visualize in his mind the scars inside his eyes.  After the fifth visit an hour after Bok came home, his sight came back miraculously.  During the 6 months he spent without vision, creating furniture became a sort of therapy and a challenge to self to see if he could still create.  Once his sight returned the rest is history.

Bok exhibited his work extensively in the late 80s into the late 90s with galleries such as La Luz de Jesus in Los Angeles, Primitivo Gallery in San Francisco, Little Rickie in New York City, Art Mecca in Chicago, Gasperi Gallery in New Orleans to name a few.  His work caught the eye of many and ended up in the collections of several celebrities as well as being purchased to become part of the decor for the newly built House of Blues in both Boston and New Orleans.  This connection with the venue ended up blossoming into him designing massive portions of their not-yet-open-at-the-time Melrose Avenue location as well as a few other locations that opened afterwards. Bok’s work has been featured in many publications worldwide including The New York Times, Metropolitan Home, Architektur & Wohnen, Brutus Interior, Details, and The Chicago Sun-Times.

The pieces featured in this exhibition were all originally created in the mid 90s to early 2000s.  They were all pieces that Bok was not quite happy with and never chose to exhibit. When the pandemic began in 2020, he came out of retirement and began reworking them until they were up to his standards.  Timing is everything and he was convinced by long time friend Robert Lopez to come out of his exhibition hiatus and hop on the show bill here at Trash Lamb that has morphed into becoming our current exhibition, Timeline Jumping.