If you Google John Will, the first two entries describe a top-tier mixed martial arts coach who has trained in jiu-jitsu, karate and tae kwon do. He has trained marines and military personnel in various countries and has written several books on self-defence. But those feats are nothing compared to the other John Will. Calgary-based, this Will has fought tougher battles. He’s been a visual artist in Calgary for almost 40 years.

And now the Glenbow Museum, where Will had his first solo show in Canada in 1980, is mounting a series of his old prints.

“Most of the works from those days were composed of disparate visual information which may not make sense to a viewer, but it does to me in that they all relate to various things that were happening to me at the time or things that were happening in the news,” says Will.

Ironically, it was the 1980 show at the Glenbow that prompted Will to stop making prints. Despite that fact that he continued to teach printmaking at the University of Calgary for over a decade, Will has produced only four or five prints since that show. His practice now focuses mostly on text-based painting.

“I’d been making prints pretty exclusively for about 15 years and I thought ‘Well that’s that, time to get on with something else,’” he says.

Will has also ventured into video and performance work over the years, collaborating on elaborate displays including a moving airplane stairway called The Stairway to Heaven. But perhaps his best-known performance, at least in the art world, is his ongoing battle with fellow Calgary artist Chris Cran.

“I first met Chris in a parking lot. I didn’t know who he was,” says Will. “This was, I guess, in the ’80s. He wanted to collaborate with me on something or other. But I wanted no part of it. I managed to avoid him for a while, but he’s persistent. Later, we became friends. I don’t know if we’ve ever collaborated on anything.”

Well, he claims they haven’t worked on anything together, but it’s hard to believe that the two men aren’t just putting on one very lengthy collaboration. Will’s paintings often take verbal stabs at Cran and in a recent article about Will in Canadian Art, Cran delights in stripping down the artist. At one point he writes: “Will’s personal affairs went into a tailspin, and so did his hygiene; his social life began to suffer. At one point, he arrived at an opening at the Art Gallery of Calgary only to be mistaken for a street person and informed that it was a private function.”

That rivalry-collaboration-antipathy will be on full display September 18 at the museum when Cran interviews Will about his work.

“Chris is continually trying to torpedo my career,” says Will. “Now it’s payback time. Time for me to drop the hammer on his bald head.”

But before he drops anything on anyone’s head, viewers will get the opportunity to view Will’s past work, something he has been trying to destroy, at least metaphorically, for some time now.

“My more recent work, especially very recent work, which has nothing to do with this show, is an attempt to kind of get rid of all the meaning from the earlier work,” he says.

The drive to be politically, socially or autobiographically relevant has passed for the 70-year-old artist. He now takes a more “nihilistic view” of his work. Although it might be devoid of meaning, at least according to Will, he still enjoys making art, even if he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.