John Middleton was born in San Francisco and raised in Kansas City. He received his B.A. in English and History at the University of Kansas and his PhD in English from Indiana University with a dissertation on Moby Dick. He was an assistant professor of English at Georgia State University, Atlanta, where he specialized in American Literature and where he received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He currently lives near New Bedford, Massachusetts, where after pursuing a career in sales and marketing, he retired from business and earned an MFA in artisanry from the University of Massachusetts/Dartmouth.
Time, tides, wind, storms, marine organisms, and the sun transform objects that are lost or discarded in the water in ways that can render them strange and beautiful. Accidents and hurricanes break up boats. Their parts, once clean and functional, are scraped and scoured into new forms that obscure their original history. Paint weathers and fades, leaving behind only hints at what it used to be. Metals rust and develop patinas. Glass shatters; sharp corners are smoothed away; surfaces cloud. Worms drill and colonize wood and bone. Things change and change again. My purpose is to collect these objects along the shoreline and to bring them together in works that call attention to the dignity, beauty, and uniqueness of their transformations while offering them the opportunity to tell their stories.