According to information on the Erie Art Museum website, John Silk Deckard has impacted the art of printmaking and sculpture both in Erie and throughout the East Coast region.

John Silk Deckard (1938-1994) was a renowned printmaker and sculptor who began his arts education as a student of Joseph Plavcan. He received a National Scholastic scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine and subsequently studied at Edinboro State College, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Pratt Graphic Art Center. During the 1960's he created a distinctive printmaking style utilizing the human form to explore themes of alienation, sacrifice, and powerlessness.

He showed his work throughout the East Coast in several important

exhibitions: He was selected by the Associated American Artists in New York City to show in A New Generation of American Printmakers. The Whitney Museum of American Art's show Annual Exhibition 1966: Contemporary Sculpture and Prints included his work. In 1965 and 1967 he was included in the Annual Exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and in 1965 and 1966 his work showed in the Boston Printmakers Annual Print Exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Other galleries and museums that showed his work were the Brooklyn Museum, De Cinque Gallery, the Museum of Art at Penn State University, and the Mickelson Gallery in Washington, DC.

In the 1970's sculpture became his primary means of expression. His works in this sculpting and in printmaking remain in several private and public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, PPG Industries, Cincinnati Art Museum, Sheldon Swope Art Museum, DePauw University, The Free Library of Philadelphia, Wichita Art Museum, and Erie Art Museum.

Among his major works are the sculptures Eternal Vigilance, Erie Art Museum, 1978; Knifeman, Wichita Museum of Art, 1986; Cruciform-Transfiguration, Holy Cross Church, Erie, Pennsylvania, 1977; and the print Didactic Dance, National Gallery of Art, 1964.

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