July 2024 Vol. 5, No.1
The Correlative Symbolism of Carla Rae Johnson
Carla Rae Johnson’s conceptual artworks can be respectively defined as ‘constructed installations’, ‘sculptures’ or even as ‘geometric-architectural forms’, each crafted to meticulous perfection. One of her recent major projects is the Séance Series, objects that create a symbolic meeting between two historical characters, each with an associated fictional story that unites these figures. The artist’s unbridled imagination allows her the freedom to create symbiotic relationships that transcend space and time, vignettes of communication between two symbolically juxtaposed people.
Johnson articulates her art as precisely as she executes it. Her visionary, idea-based art is enigmatic, packed with powerful concepts that must be unveiled to reveal its deeper meaning. Johnson imagines fantastic correlations of seemingly unrelated people, showing us how to create new ways of understanding them, in a quest for higher meaning. She guides us into a new way of seeing and processing concepts and realizations, although we will need a bit of help to understand the thinking behind each artwork, to reveal the artist’s intention and to distill the idea behind a work. With decades as an arts educator, she freely gives us insight into her ideas and fictional correlations to help us interpret what we see.
We interviewed the professional artist and educator in her New York studio. In her artwork, Carla Rae Johnson continues to push boundaries and explore new ideas. Her tidy, highly organized studio is a testament to a lifetime of artistic endeavor, filled with tools, materials, and project folders that reflect her ongoing journey of discovery and creation. At 77, she is an art-sage of sorts, neat and sporty with her short silver hair, soft spoken, articulate with the confident tone of an intellectual of wisdom and experience. Her eyes convey a sense of deep understanding and insight. Her voice carries the weight of years of practice and thought. Confident and clear, each word is chosen with care, reflecting her vast knowledge and experience. She engaged with ease, whether discussing the nuances of artistic techniques or the philosophies behind education and art. Her art is partly shaped by her passionate quest for social justice and equality as a proud feminist artist, using her creativity to challenge societal norms, and to inspire change. She will make you think.
Johnson’s drive to achieve the perfect fit to precise and exacting measure, and the choice of her favorite working material of wood, may be a learned practice. “My mother’s father was a carpenter. I used to sit as a kid and watch him work, to measure and scratch his head and measure again. He cut the piece of wood and put it where it is to go, and of course it would fit perfectly, and he would light up and just be thrilled. He said, “Right on the money.” He was so happy. I think of him all the time when I’m working with wood – the smell of it, the sawdust that gets around, the grain of the wood, the warmth of the wood. I’m not a carving artist – I’ve done subtractive sculpture. I basically build things. Some of it looks like furniture and some of it looks like architecture.”
Johnson explained an example, “As part of my Séance Series, I bring two historical figures together each time to play a game. I brought together Abraham Lincoln and Audre Lorde. I try to choose two people who are very, very different. In this case they lived in two different centuries. Abraham Lincoln is looked up to as a great man for ending slavery, and Audre Lorde is a Black 20th century feminist lesbian poet truth speaker socialist. It became clear to me that Audre Lorde would have much to say in meeting Abraham Lincoln. I think she would have held his feet to the fire, and she would have been very clear that he wasn’t so much about ending slavery as saving the union, which clearly was his job as president of the United States. Audre Lorde, being a deeply profound activist seeker of justice, would have talked to him about that. She would have been very clear to him that she felt that he missed the boat and took too long. I decided that the form that Audre Lorde meeting Abraham Lincoln would take would be a bridge, because that was what was needed for the two of them to connect to each other. I felt that Lincoln had to build the bridge. Lincoln’s side is kind of long, built of Lincoln logs. Audre Lorde’s side is not finished, and we all know that the justice she was seeking for people of color, for black Americans, African Americans, is not a finished project. And so that’s the way you can use wood to create a metaphor for the meeting of those two people.”
The artist was born and raised in East Chicago, Indiana, and now resides in Peekskill, New York. She started out wanting to be a scientist, perhaps because her father was a scientist. Multi-talented, she also considered careers in acting and writing. In the 9th grade she played the violin in the Cadet orchestra, and then decided that she wanted to make art. Her father, who paid a lot of money for the violin lessons, was not thrilled about that. He said, “Oh, you’ll be an artist for a while, and then within a couple years you’ll give that up.” She has proven him wrong, because after more than 50 years she is still an artist. She went on to study art at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Unlike most colleges at that time, in the studio faculty of seven there were three women, and the head of the department was a woman. She studied art education and had a long and successful career as an educator for 38 years. She went on to graduate school at the University of Iowa and was able to get a college teaching job right after graduation at SUNY – State University of New York, Plattsburgh, teaching ceramics. After the one-year contract ended, she moved to Chicago, self-studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, reading about contemporary art, earth art, and conceptual art.
She articulated, “Art is part and parcel of life. If it doesn’t connect with everyday living, it doesn’t make any sense to me. The personal quality of curiosity is not only something that I nurture in myself, but also something that I’ve nurtured in students during my 38-year career of teaching mostly in colleges…Dennis Oppenheim was asked for a definition of art, and he said, “Art is doing what you don’t yet know how to do.” I think that’s a very true thing for an artist, that you’re pushing beyond the status quo. For me that’s been the truth. Each project that I take on must be based on an idea. If there’s not an idea there, a concept, then I’m not really interested in doing it. Color, form, line, texture, space – those are all wonderful things, but they’re not the purpose of my art. Abstraction and non-objective art – it’s interesting to me when other people do it, but I have no relationship to it, and I don’t want to do it. At this moment when everything in our country and internationally seems to be threatened by some very dark forces– authoritarian and religious –, I don’t think I can afford to do anything but artwork that addresses those issues – social justice and earth justice. I’m always pushing the envelope of what I know how to do in my art, and secondly, the forces of justice, as expressed as an artist are paramount in what I am doing.”
“People say there’s nothing new in this world, but I don’t really agree with that. I think there are very, very new ways of looking at things. I think there are different lenses. I like art that has come through a lens that I’m not familiar with. Unique vision is something I’ve always worked for…I am inspired by literature, poetry and history. Black history has been of great interest to me. I bring my idea from there. Then, I do a tremendous amount of research about whatever that subject is. The research I’ve been doing is on individual people who have made a tremendous contribution to humanity, either to the arts or through social justice work – people I greatly admire. I will read everything that person might have written, biographies and stories about them and then, only then – sometimes it will take a year to do that –and only then, do I begin to formulate how I want them to be represented without being a specific portrait.
In my mind, my art is partly about education.
“I use the “c” word, “curiosity,” I also use the “c” word “creativity,” which is somewhat the same. As an artist who is 77 years old and who has nurtured a creative attitude towards everything in my life for a good long time, this colors everything that I look at, and everything that I do. I’m a creative problem solver. You’ve got the problem and now you need to find the solution. My favorite form of creativity is generative creativity, and that is the idea-forming that I was talking about.
But, after the idea gets formed, how do I proceed? Once I know it’s going to be a bridge, I do lots of drawings and sketching. I research on what bridges look like, and maybe the engineering principles of how a bridge stays up.”
She will continue to search and teach, each time letting her art say something deeply profound.
Appendix
Artist’s Notes on Images from The Séance Series
Emily Dickinson Meets Marcel Duchamp
This sculpture creates a tableau in which these two originals can meet, as they never did in life. (Emily Dickinson died in 1886 and Marcel Duchamp was born in 1887.) Emily and Marcel sit down to play a game of chess. The game of chess became a serious obsession with Duchamp until eventually it seemed to eclipse his making of art. The only “piece” in this game, however, is Emily Dickinson’s loaded gun.
Hildegard of Bingen Meets Herman Melville
Meeting aboard the skeletal form of a small boat, Hildegard and Herman play two separate word games. Their game boards are positioned on each side of a medieval lectern. The two ride on a swelling wave of letter-tiles from which they form words consistent with their individual visions. Symbolic of the infinite creative possibilities realized by both Hildegard and Herman, the sea of letters also suggests the sense of immensity and cosmic wholeness we find so compelling in their works.
Bessie Smith Meets Beethoven
Blues singer, intrepid entertainer, wild party giver, and deeply moving performer; Bessie Smith still has the power to incite laughter and tears from listeners far removed from the Jim Crow, blues world of the black performers of the 1920’s and 30’s. Bessie is paired with the premier icon of classical music; the epitome of Euro-centric, high-brow, creative “genius:” Ludwig Van Beethoven. Together they “play” a soundless piano with only the potential movement of Bessie’s Ostrich plumes to stir the senses.
Georgia O’Keeffe Meets Galileo Galilei
These two acute observers search the heavens and the earth in a game of “I Spy.” Each must sit with some discomfort on their principled choices of social isolation and empirical knowledge.
Anne Frank Meets Albert Schweitzer
Anne Frank and Albert Schweitzer play “Hide and Seek,” but, in this tableau, it is Anne who seeks and Albert who hides. The tableau includes 99 drawings. Nine drawings on Anne’s side consist of varied graphite rectangles. These are arranged much like the photos Anne displayed on the walls of her tiny sleeping quarters in the “secret annex.” On Albert Schweitzer’s portion of the tableau, 90 identical “pages” have graphite borders and are strewn about the floor, like leaves beneath tropical trees.
Frida Kahlo Meets Franz Kafka
A lengthy search for just the right furniture for the meeting of Kahlo and Kafka ended with the sudden, serendipitous discovery of these two chairs! Frida and Franz play a pitched and portentous version of “Ring Around the Rosie” (a children’s game that has often been associated with the Great Plague). Inscriptions on the circular base connect the two via their mutual comprehension of human suffering.
Frank Matheis, Writer
Frank Matheis is a music, arts and culture writer and a contributing writer to the Inspiration Art Group International. His latest project was the book ‘Sweet Bitter Blues’ co-written with National Heritage Fellow Phil Wiggins (University Press of Mississippi, 2020). His column ‘In Other Words’ features member artists in all disciplines and general arts essays. He is also a contributing writer to Living Blues magazine (Center for Southern Culture Studies) and the publisher/editor of thecountryblues.com. Frank was formerly an award-winning radio and music producer whose radio documentaries were heard on three continents in two languages. He is also a published photographer, curator and video producer.