Collection: John Evans

John Evans (1932-2012) 

Born in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, John Evans was a collage artist who transformed New York City's discarded street life into art from his Greenwich Village studio between 1964 and 2000. Each day, he collected random objects—ticket stubs, cigarette butts, product labels—from the East Village streets, creating daily collages on notebook paper that he rubber-stamped with dates, producing over ten thousand works that "glow like stain glass."

After earning his MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1963, Evans moved to New York where his modest but honest artistic practice was noted by Art in America as being "penalized for its honesty, modesty, wit and warmth." His life's work culminated in the book "John Evans: Collages" and a celebrated 2002-2003 exhibition at the New-York Historical Society before his passing in 2012.