1976 M.A. University of California, Los Angeles

1972 B.A. Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA

Mr. Garrett has been working with the application of textile technologies and imagery to various materials for the past forty years. Currently a full time studio artist in Las Cruces, New Mexico, he taught for many years at colleges and universities in California, including Scripps College and UCLA. He now teaches workshops nationwide on creativity and the use of textile methods to create sculpture. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded Mr. Garrett fellowships in 1983 and 1995. In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the American Craft Council College of Fellows in recognition of his outstanding artistic achievement and leadership in the field. In 2013 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Basketry Organization.

His work is in museum collections including:

Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM

Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AR

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

Erie Museum, Erie, PA

High Museum, Atlanta GA

Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN

Mint Museum of Craft and Design, Charlotte, NC

Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM

Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, OK

Racine Art Museum. Racine, WI

Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Mr. Garrett has exhibited his work extensively for the past thirty-five years. Some important shows have been:

1981 Made in LA: Contemporary Crafts ’81, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA

1982 Art and/or Craft: USA and Japan, Kanazawa, Japan

1984 Vehta Biennale, Romaanse Kerk, Brussels, Belgium

1986 Fiber R/Evolution, Milwaukee Art Museum, WI

1987 The Eloquent Object, Philbrook Museum, Tulsa, OK

1988 Frontiers in Fiber: The Americans, North Dakota Museum of Art,Grand Forks, ND

1989 Craft Today, USA, Musee Des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France

1990 Explorations: The Aesthetic of Excess, American Craft Museum, NYC, NY

1993 USA-Today, Netherlands Textile Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands

1993 Subversive Crafts, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA

1996 Viewpoint: Art As Message, Craft Alliance Gallery, St. Louis, MO

1997 Trashformations: Recycled Materials in American Art and Design, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA

1998 Ninth International Triennial of Tapestry, Central Museum of Textiles, Lodz, Poland

2002 John Garrett Retrospective, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA

2003 Environmental Installation: Paper Wall, UW-River Falls, WI

2004 Inaugural Exhibition, Artspace 116, Albuquerque, NM

2005 Recycle, Reuse, Recreate, Artspace Gallery, Center for the Arts, Jackson, WY

2006 The Windows Project, Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI

2007 The Baroque Line, The Bemis Center, Omaha, NE

2010 Caravan: An Installation, Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, MA

2012 Wire Transference, Philadelphia University, Philadelphia, PA

2014 Urban Weavings, Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra, Australia

2016 The Box Project: Uncommon Threads, Commissioned works from the Lloyd Cotsen Collection, The Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

2017 Schemes and Dreams, Chiaroscuro Gallery, Santa Fe, NM