John Clapp was born in rural Ontario in 1965. He studied Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew and related languages, history and religion at University of Toronto.

As an outsider artist his experience has been broad, including years of professional musicianship and writing. He now focuses on sculpture and painting.

His Natives of Somewhere collection consists of miniature indigenous dwellings, bas reliefs and paintings which reflect in their juxtaposed ruggedness and fineness both his schooling and his rural upbringing.

The miniature buildings can function as landscape architecture, as bird houses, feeders, squirrel dens, planters and retaining walls, and on a larger scale can serve as forts and play houses for children, dwellings for pets, garden tool sheds and compost storage bins.

Built from natural materials that could easily be dismissed as waste, these structures seem to materialize out of thin air and yet they are dramatically substantial given the solidity of their construction and earthy nature of their composition. John speculates the attraction of these pieces comes from their expression of the very nature of home: all of our ancestors have lived in such dwellings at some point in history, here or elsewhere.

Ultimately we are, all of us, natives of somewhere.