John Soderberg - had circled the world eight times and visited more than 80 countries before graduating from high school in Bangkok, Thailand. The King of Afghanistan had recruited his father, a U.S. Foreign Services Officer, to build that nation's first engineering school. John lived his first eighteen years in Afghanistan, India and Thailand. He was exposed to the great art and architecture of ancient Egypt, Israel, Greece, Rome, Imperial China, India, the British Isles and other countries he visited.

As a result, John knew from a very early age that he wanted to live with art and from an equally young age was fired with the urge to become an artist. His first sculptures, "commissioned" by his mother, were executed in mud at home in Kabul, Afghanistan. John was two years old. In the family's next home, India, he took up oil painting at age five; and at age fourteen he studied with a Buddhist monk who was the leading master of teakwood carving. In Thailand as a martial artist he also studied what he recalls as a true initiation into that most difficult of things for an artist to capture - motion.

After graduation from high school in the 1960s, John came to America for college, but veered from the academic path by painting on the street in Berkeley during the riots of the late Sixties. Then in late 1969, for a change of pace, he volunteered for service in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Upon his honorable discharge, John focused on metal. He worked as a tool-and-die maker machinist, fine art jeweler, and custom knife maker. In 1976, he committed himself wholly to sculpture, and has since worked exclusively in the bronze medium.

Recognizing the value of the artist as communicator, Dr. Robert Schuller honored John by ordaining him as a minister in 1997. In 1998 John received his doctorate in Humane Letters from Northern Arizona University.

Internationally collected, John has gained recognition through the rare depth of human passion and empathy consistently evident in his work. He and his wife Traci live and work on their small ranch in Camp Verde, Arizona, near Sedona, where John has completed several monumental and life-size commissions for private parties and organizations such as Amnesty International, PepsiCo, The Crystal Cathedral, Gore-Tex International, Honeywell Corporation, Burger King, Falcon Publishing and Jacmar Foods, among others. He has sculpted the portraits of notable national and international figures such as Christ, Steve Biko, Al Stein, Mark Honeywell, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, St. Catherine of Siena, Bill and Vieve Gore, Dr. Robert Schuller, James and Naomi Wilden, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Dr. Billy Graham, Moses, Merlin and Sacajawea. His bronzes, including commissioned portraits, are storytelling in nature and his inspirations often come from ancient mythology and fascinating historical facts.