Buffalo Maritime
Center - Table of Contents
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Buffalo Maritime
Center
90 Arthur Street, Buffalo, New York
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Maritime Center - Official Website
John Montague
(American, 1944-) was born in 1944 in upstate New York but grew up in
St. Petersburg, Florida. In addition to a 37 year college teaching
career in art and design history he has also worked as a practicing
designer, artist, illustrator and film animator. After arriving in
Buffalo in 1984 to set up the History of Design program at Buffalo
State, he played an active role in historic preservation and urban
planning, serving for years on the Boards of the Preservation
Coalition, Landmark Society, the City Preservation Board and various
city planning commissions.
In 1988 with two colleagues in the Design Department John started the
boat building program at Buffalo State. It soon evolved into
the Center
for Watercraft Studies, the Sea Fever Project, then The Buffalo
Community Boating Center, and the Buffalo State College Maritime
Center. More recently they broke away from Buffalo State College and
are now known as the Buffalo Maritime Center of which John is
the
Executive Director.
The Maritime Center allows him to pursue his life
long passion for sailing and designing boats as well as his scholarly
interests in the history of naval architecture. The Maritime Center has
not only become a center for studying, building, and restoring boats
but also an effective program for community outreach and waterfront
development. As Director of the Maritime Center, a board member of the
Buffalo Yacht Club and an architectural historian, he has been actively
involved in the redevelopment of Buffalo’s waterfront. His recent focus
on marine painting draws on this broad range of diverse interests,
experiences, passions and skills.
“I have loved drawing since early childhood. One of my earliest
recollections was our father supplying us with large rolls of news
print. My brother and I would start drawing at opposite ends - usually
great battle scenes! In the drawing process we would often trade places
and rework and eventually destroy each other’s work. We spent hours
using drawing as a competitive sport.”
In high school he started painting large 4’ x 5’ masonite panels of
grandiose monumental subjects like ‘Napoleon’s Retreat from Russia',
however, by the time he started college in the early sixties he opted
to major in history and archaeology. Nevertheless he continued to draw
and paint, and in the meantime began to do “portraits” of peoples’
homes. This not only provided terrifying lessons in perspective drawing
under pressure but also developed into a thriving business, a business
prosperous enough to pay his way to Oxford to study archaeology and
travel in France and Germany. In graduate school he discovered Art
History and went on to get a doctorate in French Medieval Architecture
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His analytical drawing skills
became essential tools in his research on medieval mason’s geometry. In
fact, his final dissertation included over 2,000 drawings of French
Romanesque sculptured ornament measured and drawn on site of over 300
medieval churches and monasteries.
While in the
midst of
his medieval studies he was inspired by the beginnings of the film
studies movement centered at the University and subsequently threw
himself into animation and experimental film. In addition to producing
a conventional but partially animated film “The Architecture of Frank
Lloyd Wright”, he began a film animation program at the University of
Wisconsin-Whitewater which he would run for the next ten years. While
continuing to study medieval design, art and technology and developing
the foundations for design history, he taught figure drawing, anatomy
and perspective in Wisconsin, Denmark and England before coming to
Buffalo. His perspective and architectural rendering courses culminated
in the publication of his book Basic Perspective Drawing, first
published in 1984 (Van Nostrand) and now entering its 5th edition (John
Wiley Spring of 2009). In addition to his two books on boat building he
has written numerous articles and papers on a wide range of subjects.
“My current painting projects are appropriately focused on maritime
subjects which allow me to draw upon both my historical and aesthetic
interests. I am particularly fascinated by the long neglected maritime
history of the Great Lakes. Some of my drawings and paintings are boats
which I have designed, built, owned or used. Others are carefully
researched historical reconstructions and visualizations of the lost
realities.”
"It is the Maritime Center's mission to study and celebrate the rich
maritime heritage of the Niagara Frontier and to encourage and promote
public access to the area's historic waterfront and waterways."