John Boxtel
| John Boxtel | |
|---|---|
 The annual obstacle course race at Royal Military College of Canada is memorialized by a sculpture by John Boxtel, "To Overcome", which was a gift of the class of 1991 | |
| Born |
21 June 1930 Goirle, Netherlands |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Education | Technical School in Tilburg, Netherlands. |
| Known for | sculptor |
John Boxtel (21 June 1930) is a Dutch sculptor and art teacher. His works include sculpture, woodcarving, architectural drafting, design and building.
Biography
Born in Goirle the Netherlands, Boxtel studied architecture at the Technical School in Tilburg, Netherlands.
After emigrating to Canada in 1954, he studied at the University of Toronto, Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Ontario and the Artists' Workshop in London, Ontario. In 1967, he became an art teacher.
He has had gallery exhibitions in Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, Kingston, Boston and the Netherlands. His public commissioned works for monuments were done in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada and United States.
Works
His works include:
- "The Peacekeeper", a sculpture of a larger than life-size depicting a soldier in uniform carrying his gun in his left hand and a child on his right arm. The sculpture is on the wall in the Royal Military College of Canada library in Kingston, Ontario.
- "To Overcome", a sculpture of the Royal Military College of Canada obstacle course, a gift of the class of 1991.[1]
- "Interned Madonna," depicts a Ukrainian woman internee with two of her children, a swaddled infant boy and a young girl clinging to her mother's dress at the former site of the Spirit Lake Internment Camp, Amos Quebec. This statue was erected on June 16, 2001 in memory of the wives and children imprisoned with their husbands during Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920.[2]
- "Why?", a statue of Ukrainian Canadian internee circa 1916 entitled installed at the Castle Mountain internment camp site, in Banff National Park, on 12 August 1995 was erected in memory of those imprisoned during Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920.[3]
Boxtel is also the author of five books: Go Fly a Kite: The Kite-Builder's Manual; Under the Wing of an Angel; Thousand Island Pioneers; Beware of Black Widows and Spiders; and Studio: Sculptures of John Boxtel.[4]