John Van Dyke is a storyteller who has traveled across the country, filming and recording conversations with over 130 people in 34 states. His upcoming book BOOM! follows his journey. He is the founder and creative director of An American Mosaic, a project that explores and showcases the diversity, culture, and history of the American people and places. He has used his skills in filmmaking, writing, and design, as well as a passion for listening and learning from others to tell their stories.
Before embarking on his journey, John Van Dyke was a successful designer, architect, and branding expert, who led an internationally recognized design office based in Seattle for 21 years. He also designed a stunning house in Mexico, featured in Architectural Record Magazine in 2016. He closed his office to pursue other interests, personal architectural projects, and travel.
As a storyteller I am taking you along with me in my upcoming book. Discovering people and places as I traveled around the country meeting people, having random conversations. History books will talk about us — and this time— long after we are gone. It will be a complicated history of technology, generations, finance, power, politics, media, and humanity.
John Van Dyke
Ideas, thoughts, have come out of my conversations as I start connecting the dots on so many things. Our past has made today possible. Yet many tend to forget what America was built on. America is about ideas, values, beliefs, family, communities, and stories. It was founded as a community of diverse peoples who shared a dream of a better place and life. Immigrants, many of whom didn’t speak English helped build out America. They settled in the communities around resources and industry. Hard work was rewarded and families grew. Young kids who saw opportunities, and a better life, were educated. The American Dream was spreading. Anything was possible. Along the way we invented, and created, and prospered.
Meet Doug, Todd, Kristen, Art, Keith, Victoria, Levi, Cindy, Rex, Maurice, Terese, Scotty, Jon, Laura, Bailey, Joey, David and more.
When I was first thinking about how to start this project, what to ask people, what is important, the American Dream kept coming up. I guess I was thinking that maybe people thought it no longer existed or was broken. Certainly a lot of media and rhetoric was portraying that. Yet I found it living in the heart of immigrants and Storm Lake, the newspaper editor, a Mexican restaurant, and Levi the young Amish man. And I was just beginning.
