John Brendan Guinan is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His practice includes textiles, collage, assemblage, readymades, installation, sculpture and performance. Guinan's work examines concepts related to mythos, religion, and ritual through the reworking of textiles, found objects and other industrial and every day materials. Threaded throughout his oeuvre are transmuted and recontextualized artifacts and the merging of religious, high and low-brow materials - sleeping bags, bungee cords, priest vestments, church pews, prie-dieus, aspergillums, prayer cards, ratchet straps, tarp, and designer textiles among others. The artist's influences span Catholic liturgy, religious art, mythology, occultism, fashion, film, and literature.
Guinan was born at home in the Logan Circle neighborhood of inner city Washington, DC above the homeless shelter and soup kitchen founded and run by his parents. His upbringing was rooted in the Catholic Worker tradition emphasizing non-violence, hospitality, personalism, and Anarchism. Guinan's father, a former Catholic Priest and well known activist and author, J. Edward Guinan (Dec. 2015) was a leader in the social justice movement and founder of Community for Creative Non-Violence. The artist has participated in both solo and group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Washington, D.C., Richmond, and Miami. He was the subject of 'Why I Paint', a documentary produced by Academy Award winning Fine Films in 2018.