A member of the well-known Houston family, John spent the first seven years of his life in the Arctic at Cape Dorset, Baffin Island. He studied art in Paris and graduated from Yale University in 1975; that same year, he took up the position of Art Advisor to the Pangnirtung Co-operative's printmaking project. Over the next five years, while mastering Inuktitut, he brought out four print collections and wrote the story for a documentary, “Art of the Arctic Whalemen”, directed by his father James Houston. After Pangnirtung, he was off on a 20,000-mile trip across the North, casting Inuit for “Never Cry Wolf”, on which he later served as 1st Assistant Director. With the proceeds from that film, John established the Houston North Gallery in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia with the help of his mother, the late Alma Houston. In 1998, John co-wrote and directed his first film. This one-hour documentary about his parents and the Inuit of Cape Dorset, “Songs in Stone: an Arctic Journey Home”, was followed by John's quest for a pre-Christian Inuit deity in “Nuliajuk: Mother of the Sea Beasts”. Both films have won international awards. John has just completed the Arctic trilogy with “Diet of Souls”, an intimate look at the relationship between Inuit and animals.
