Garth Johnson Bio

International Museum of Print and Clay

From: Garth Johnson • Back to Garth Johnson Page
Sent: Thursday, July 6, 2000 9:47 AM
To: Les Lawrence
Subject: Re: Bio and info for show

I am just now pulling out of Alfred to move to Atlanta
tomorrow, and I will be transient for a few weeks--I
can speed some slides off to you, though, and email
you the bio, though. Send me your address, and I'll
priority mail slides off to you...here, I've got a few
minutes, I'll do the bio (marginally first person...)

I was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, and
spent my formative years in the country, learning to
entertain myself with no neighbors around. This
isolation ended my Senior year of high school, when I
went to Germany as an exchange student. This was the
year of unification, and I spent it right outside of
Bonn--an excellent vantage point from which to watch
the new world order emerge.
When I returned, I did the only thing that made
sense to me, and enrolled in the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln as an art major--an illustration
major to be exact. I plodded through art school,
singing in local bands, and opened an independent
record shop, which I ran for three years. About this
time, I began "drifting" into the emerging ceramic
department at the University, during which time, the
Illustration program at UNL was eliminated. I took
this as a sign to throw myself into clay, and finished
my B.F.A. in Ceramics in 1997, and also began my work
with the Pottery Liberation Front. The PLF is a force
created to challenge art world attitudes toward clay,
and more importantly, ceramic artists attitude toward
art.
All of this led me to grad school at Alfred in
1998, where I continued my quest to push at the
boundaries of ceramic art. I began china painting
blank plates, and using computer laser transfer prints
on these plates, combining them to bear larger images
in tandem. These plate pieces fell comfortably in the
cracks between ceramics, painting, printmaking, and
computers, these boundaries were what I found
interesting. In the fall of 1999, I began working
toward my thesis show, and began altering collectible
plates, using their nostalgic genre scenes as a
platform for commentary.

Garth Johnson
July, 2000

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