Featured Member - Pamela Michelle Johnson
www.pamelamichellejohnson.com
www.pelime.com/michellejohnson
Pamela Michelle Johnson attended California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, and graduated with a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an art minor with honors. After graduation, she continued to pursue ceramics, painting and figure drawing independently while working for four years as an engineer in the construction industry. In 2003, she was awarded an artist in residency at The Institute of Ceramic Studies at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park in Shigaraki, Japan. This experience was influential in her development as an artist and decisions regarding her career path.
Shortly after her return from Japan, Johnson decided to seek new direction in her life and to focus on art as a career. She uprooted from her native California, left her career in engineering, and made a new home in Chicago. There she found a thriving emerging artist culture that provided her with opportunities to continue to develop her own work within a community of other working artists. She became a member at the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art to work on her figure drawing in open workshops, and began exhibiting her work in galleries and art festivals. Her body of work continues to evolve through her most recent American Still-Life series.
Q. Can you define your perception of art for us?
A. Art is very hard to define and extremely subjective. For me art is a form of communication. It is a tool to explain and begin a dialog about the world around us. It is an expression of thought and emotion.
Q. What triggered your interest in painting?
A. I can’t really explain why I paint. I just know that I am happiest when I am making things. I love having a vision in my head and after hard work and focus, finally seeing it actualized into a reality.
Q. Your paintings are quite interesting. Can you tell us how and what made you go into ‘food arts’?
A. Throughout art history food has been portrayed in still life paintings. At the time that I started this series of work, I was not seeing paintings that accurately portrayed current American culture. As classical art imagery, food seemed like an ideal subject matter to explore and comment on American culture. With this body of work I wanted to update the conventional notion of a still life. I wanted to create work that presented a picture of current mainstream American culture. Sadly our culture is dominated by mass consumption and mass production. Highly processed, artificially flavored, junk food seemed appropriate symbols of the bounty that is inherent in American culture and the transgression of that bounty to overindulgence and gluttonous excess.
Q. Can you remember your first painting?
A. Not really. I have seen pictures of myself as a toddler messing around with paint. So I guess I have been making art longer than I can remember.
Q. What is the motivation behind your choice of subject?
A. It is very easy when someone is immersed in a culture since childhood to never step back and examine that way of life. Inherent to painting, an image is placed on a wall with the purpose of invoking reflection. My goal is for a moment for the viewer to remove themselves from the culture that surrounds them and look at it critically.
Q. What are your inspirations?
A. I find inspiration everywhere. I look at all types and styles of art. I also find inspiration in observing and trying to make sense of what is going on in the world around me.
Q. Are there any other ‘food artists’ that inspire you?
A. I find inspiration in all types of art. But within the category of food artists, I have always been a fan of Wayne Thiebaud. Recently I came across Emily Eveleth’s work and was blow away with her luscious brushwork. I also find Will Cotton’s dreamy candy landscapes and Cindy Wright’s meat paintings to be superb.
Q. Is there a story behind your work?
A. One of the very first paintings from this body of work was Burgers I, a six-foot towering pile of hamburgers. I had the idea for the painting in the back of my mind for a while and was trying to determine if it would be a great painting or just kind of gross. I had just begun exploring the idea of painting junk food and was still figuring out how best to present my ideas. Then one day I randomly got a coupon in the mail from the Burger King around the corner from my house for ten burgers for five dollars. So I took it as a sign that this idea was something that I really should do. I tend to be most creative late at night. So late one Sunday night, I went to Burger King armed with my coupon and that night began my series of larger than life piles of junk food paintings.
Q. Do you paint other subjects?
A. Right now I am primarily focused on mass-produced, mass-consumed, junk food as a subject matter. In the past, I have done some abstract landscape work and some figurative work. Every once in a while, I explore new subjects.
Q. Can you talk about any professional experience?
A. I took a very indirect route to becoming an artist. My degree is actually in civil engineering. I worked as an engineer for several years before I decided to pursue a career as an artist. Now my primary focus is creating and exhibiting my paintings.
Q. Any collaboration or exhibitions?
A. Currently, I am preparing for a group show at Lemberg Gallery in Ferndale, MI. That exhibit opens in May. In November, I have a solo show in Chicago at the Illinois Institute of Art’s Gallery 180.
Q. Do you have a favorite piece among your works?
A. That is always a hard question and an ever-changing answer. I am usually the most excited about the latest piece that I have just finished. It is still new, fresh and exciting in my mind.
Q. What equipment & techniques do you use?
A. I use very traditional oil painting materials. I do not use much in the way of mediums. Primarily, just oil paint on stretched canvas.
Q. Are you working on new projects currently?
A. I always have at least one painting in progress. There have been a few new ideas floating around in my head for a while now, so I have been exploring some of those. I am still very much in the exploration and development of those ideas. So it is way too soon to talk about it.
Q. What are your professional ambitions and your projects for 2011 and how do you hope Pelime can help with this?
A. Pelime seems to be a great community of talented individuals. I look forward to being inspired by others work.
