John Seubert was a lifelong Chicago artist who was driven by a relentless desire to create, be it paintings, sculptures, furniture, jewelry, clocks or even lamps with mosaic shades.
Seubert filled his longtime Lakeview home with his artwork, which — as is the case for many artists — occurred in cycles or phases.
“I always found his work kind of subversive and edgy and daring, but also very humorous,” said Victor Armendariz, the founder of Gallery VICTOR, a Chicago contemporary art gallery. “There’s a ton of humor in his work and how he approached things.”
Seubert, 66, died of complications from a brain aneurysm on July 30 at his home in Lakeview, said his sister, Cara Teuber. He first suffered an aneurysm in April.
Born in St. Louis, Seubert (pronounced SOY-bert) moved to Algonquin when he was about 4 years old, and he graduated from Irving Crown High School in Carpentersville. He then took some art and jewelry-making classes at Elgin Community College.
While in his 20s, Seubert packed up his car and moved to Los Angeles for a time, appearing as an extra in some films. After his funds ran dry, he returned to the Chicago area and began working various day jobs while making art whenever he could, his sister said.
Seubert worked for more than two decades as a handyman for a man who owned Chicago apartment buildings.“John was very good with his hands,” Teuber said. “He could do anything — he did plumbing, electrical and painting.”
Other of Seubert’s day jobs included working as an assistant to Chicago photographer Mark Hauser and helping prepare galleries at the Museum of Contemporary Art and at other art galleries.
However, Seubert’s primary desire in life, friends and colleagues said, was to create art. Among his creations were furniture, lamps with mosaic shades from Lake Michigan beach glass, jewelry, paintings, sculptures and clocks. Seubert termed his furniture pieces “crash tables,” as they were made from what he described as a “collision of parts,” and they were both functional and works of art. His clocks focused on racism and Seubert’s own experiences as a victim of bigotry as a gay man.
“What he called his ‘crash tables’ were crazy pieces of art that actually were furniture, too,” Teuber said.
Seubert displayed his artwork in galleries on the Near North Side, some of which also employed him. According to Seubert’s family, art dealer Ann Nathan, who died last year at age 98, was the first to show Seubert’s work, at her Objects Gallery in the 1980s. He then displayed furniture and objects at Gallery Vienna in River North in 1989, and around that time, Seubert designed a copper-plated bar for the European-style Tete a Tete cafe on the second floor of Gallery Vienna’s building.
Later, Jennifer Norback Fine Art in River North presented an exhibit of a dozen of Seubert’s handcrafted clocks. Then, in 2017, Seubert began showing his artwork at Armendariz’s Gallery VICTOR, where Seubert also was the gallery’s main preparator.
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“In a lot of ways, his work was observational of our culture,” said Armendariz, a longtime friend. “He drew on stuff from his life, his day — and he was an avid reader with an almost encyclopedic knowledge about topics, like history, art and the art community, and all that made its way into his work. He didn’t edit himself, for better or worse, so in his work, you see that rawness come out. That’s part of what makes (his work) important — he let his ideas come in and bubble up.”
Nathan Churchill, an art client and former next-door neighbor who now lives in Portugal, recalled getting to know Seubert in the wake of the pandemic.
“His work was funny and ironic, and that’s the kind of art I like,” Churchill said. “The guy had an extraordinary talent.”
Seubert went through a phase during the pandemic where he was consuming canned ham that he had stored in his basement. From that, he painted paintings of canned hams, Churchill said.
“The paintings were incredible,” Churchill said, “and through that, I got to know about his other art — crash tables, clocks, and these incredible lamps made with Chicago beach glass. So we bought one of his lamps and bought some other little sculptures and we love it and it’s now in Portugal with us. He was interminably making art — it was 24/7 for him. He was a true, true artist.”
Seubert’s signatures on his artwork varied depending on his mood, but they were always under different guises, such as Dear John, John John, John Grey, John Dolly or even simply John. Armendariz said Seubert’s art-making process involved an intense focus, followed by a pivot to a different subject or medium.
“He would get into a series, and then at the end of it, he would just get sick of it and put it aside and be done, and then he would invite me to his studio to see it, and sometimes I would save it for a future show,” Armendariz said. “There was…a restlessness about doing something obsessively and then switching and changing on a dime.”
Seubert never retired from work or from making art.
“He’s always done art every minute that he wasn’t working,” Teuber said.
In addition to his sister, Seubert is survived by his 96-year-old father, Carl; and four brothers, Eric, Max, Curt and Carl Jr.
Services were held.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.