connie johnson productions

new paintings

2010-09-13T19:04:00.009-05:00

New paintings from 2010 in the Ochre series, Ochre 6, 5, (top row, left to right) 4, 3 (bottom row, left to right). All 16" tall, by 12" wide on hardwood panel.

Paintings from 2009

2010-09-13T19:00:00.000-05:00

Paintings from 2009 in the Ochre series. All 16" tall by 12" wide on hardwood panel.

The Dress

2008-09-10T18:54:00.028-05:00

My dress was juried into the 9th Annual Frances N. Roddy Open Competition at the Concord Art Association. The opening reception is this Thursday, September 11th, from 6-8 pm. The show runs from September 11-October 12, 2008. The juror was Pamela Clark Cochrane, an independent curator and former director/owner, Clark Gallery, Lincoln, MA.

I found the dress last April at our local semi-annual swap and grabbed it not knowing exactly what I was going to do with it. The kids loved it, and I kept it hanging in the breezeway where I work and have my supplies. Finally, I needed something to submit to the Roddy competition, and decided to embellish it with leftover roses. Of course I needed jewelry, and my fake pearls just didn't seem right, so I took some of my mini-assemblages and strung them together with waxed thread. I mended the rip in the tulle with more of the same thread and proceeded to write on the satin underskirt with indelible black ink. Initially I wanted to cover the entire skirt with writing, but I underestimated the fullness of the skirt, and ran out of time. Later I'll go in and copy down some of the writing to put excerpts here for people to read.

It is hanging on a pink satin covered hanger. I used more roses to hold the dress shoulders on the hanger. The people hanging the show hung it from the ceiling, and it spins with the movement of air around it. Very magical in the setting.

Solo Show at the Coleman Gallery

2008-02-08T15:31:00.000-05:00

The Black Roses are on display for the month of February in the Coleman Gallery of the Concord Art Association. The exhibit has 15 Rose wall sculptures, 6 collages incorporation the roses, and two new pieces using tarpaper in a different way. Showing the work together in one place is always inspiring. Here are two pictures of the installation. There is going to be a reception February 14th, Thursday evening from 6-8 pm.

Roses at the Clark Gallery

2007-06-14T11:53:00.000-05:00

Here is a picture of the installation at the Clark Gallery. They are so nice in there, I went there this morning after the gym, in slightly nicer clothes than usual, and took the photos. I love the shadows that are cast on the wall. The entire piece is about 11 feet wide and 4 feet tall. It is hard to see it here, but they project about 15 inches from the wall, really making a relief structure.

Roses at the Clark Gallery

2007-06-05T09:10:00.000-05:00

I am going to post a picture of the hanging from the Clark Gallery. They hung them wonderfully, under very bright sharp lights, so there are wonderful shadows on the walls under each piece. Because the pieces are close together, the shadows all intersect, forming another dimension to the pieces incorporating the wall into the piece. It is very wonderful and exactly what I had planned.

Tarpaper Roses

2007-06-05T05:59:00.000-05:00

Tarpaper Roses are included in the summer group show “Introducing...” at the Clark Gallery in Lincoln MA. I made a series of pieces specifically for the show, planning them as a unit that hang together to form a black and white grid on the wall. The picture shows the layout, the sizes (h x w x d) of the three different units from left are: 40” x 20” x 10”, 40” x 50” x 18”, and 15” x 17” x 7”. The largest one weighs about 50 pounds!

What a production! Just planning the base for the pieces involved endless steps. Of course I wanted to use a single sheet of plywood efficiently, have a minimum number of cuts, and end up with pieces that would fit into my car without destroying even more of the door gaskets. A fellow artist pointed out that at the larger sizes, ½” plywood would be too heavy, and I would be better off using ¼” sheets and banding them with 1” x 2” strips on the rear for support. Ok, that just meant now figuring out the total lengths of wood for the support, and then planning how to lay them out. A few missteps along the way: make sure to screw the boards together before the glue dries and the clamps are removed! In the end they worked out great, very solidly attached and rigid. Phew.

Then to fill them with roses: I wanted to have a range of sizes, and on the larger pieces, I needed to fill the space, so that meant making really big roses to form a framework. There is a relationship between the width of the paper strip and length needed to fold the rose, and for larger roses, the strips end up being unwieldy! Carole Andrews makes giant sculptures out of tarpaper forming them over an aluminum structure and getting inside them with a blowtorch to weld the seams (!), well working with the paper is not only very tactile, but gets very physical as well.

totem 1

2007-04-01T09:13:00.000-05:00

One of my large rose pieces was accepted into a juried show! Lucy Lacoste of the Lacoste Gallery in Concord and Ilana Manolson juried the Members Jury II show at the Concord Art Association and accepted Totem #1. Interesting enough it was hung next to a black/white drawing of roses.....This piece is 32" high, 16" wide and 8" deep and is part of a series of large rose relief sculptures I am making. I like this one a lot and have it hanging in my living room.

Icons 4

2007-03-24T18:32:00.000-05:00

This is another piece similar to Icons 2, which layers waxed paper, miniature boxes filled with various detritus from my garden and walks, all placed on a piece of scrap plywood which was gouged and waxed.

Icons 4: 10" x 19".

Icons 2

2007-03-24T18:28:00.000-05:00

I’m also interested in the contrast between the tarpaper rose and it’s placement in a miniature environment, created by assembling objects from my walks and garden expeditions such as garlic stems, tomatillo wrappers, birch bark, paper wasp nests and hickory seed pods. Someone mentioned treating the bark for long term viability, and wax occurred to me, and as I started waxing the bark with a travel iron I unearthed in my basement, left over from my husband’s former life when he traveled the world, I found myself waxing papers from my stash as well. Now I have tarpaper roses, matchboxes filled with found treasures, and other objects, placed on layers of waxed papers in turn placed on waxed and gouged plywood, the wax being the common material linking my finds from nature with my folded tarpaper roses.

The piece shown here is 6" x 8" and is called Icons 2.

adorned and embellished, grace notes of roses

2007-01-27T12:36:00.000-05:00

In getting a proposal ready for a show of my tar paper roses, I’ve been thinking a lot what the title should be.

Adornments
Adorned and adored, open and shut, making do
Shopped, captivated, sculpted, fabricated, woven, web, statue
Adorned and trimmed, notions of adornment, notions, trimmings
Decorated, enhanced, covered, shielded, hidden, layers, tiers, layers, shells, layers, peeled away, having a core, hard nut to crack, gristle of fat and bone.
Layers of meaning, nature, and nature run amok
Appropriated space, appropriated imagery, materials used out of context
Apples to apples, apples to oranges, dust to dust, ashes to ashes, new life

Adornment: deck and furnish, be an ornament to, bedeck, ornamental adornments, embellishment, frill, grace notes, accessories of worship, gewgaw

Embellishment: beautify, add interest to
Adornments of desire, accouterments of success
Trappings of power, trappings of wealth
Ornaments of worship, embellishments of beauty

Caparison: have trappings, obscure, to adorn richly

Rose: Everything is roses, Roses all the way, Ease, success, favorable
Optimistic, Rose colored glasses, unfounded optimism
War of roses: red vs. white

Rosary: Rose garden, rose bed, bed of roses
String of 55 beads to keep track of prayers
Form of devotion in which prayers are said while counting on a special string of beads

Grace notes really sticks with me.

Tar Paper: What's the big deal?

2007-01-10T19:33:00.000-05:00

Amazing, there are people who don't know about tar paper. I took a small wall hanging of tar paper roses attached to a 5" x 6" plywood to the Artist Exchange at the Copley Society this past Wednesday evening to show to the group. Jason Brockert didn't know what to make of the piece until I explained tar paper to him, and then he found it interesting. It is a tar (just like the stuff that goes on roads) impregnated paper, that is used extensively in roofing. It comes in huge rolls, about 36" wide, is black (just like tar), costs around $20 for the roll, and has faint white lines on one side to help in laying it out on roofing projects. It has a wonderful soft black color, very dense and with deep tones. It also has a very pronounced grain, which enables smooth tears along the length. It folds well with the slightest crease. It is also called roofing felt by some people.

All of the above is why I like using it so much. I've used it as a support for collages, I've made little boxes out of it, and now I'm using it for folded roses.

Tar Paper Roses

2007-01-04T21:00:00.001-05:00

Tar Paper Roses are so cool!

I started making more tar paper roses after a long break. The picture on the right shows the first piece I made which is about 22" wide, 20" high, and 4-5" deep. I love the way the light bounces off the folded surfaces, and the shadows that are created on the wall. I finished 5 smaller pieces, which are 7" by 8" by 3". I took four of them to the holiday exhibit at the Concord Art Association, and kept one for a spare. I showed them to Faith after the fourth grade coffee, and she laughed, saying now that is getting weird. Like my earlier work wasn't? No, she could fill her walls with it. Anyway.

Leaf and Roses

2007-01-02T20:58:00.000-05:00

Ok, every woman loves them, the little folded ribbon roses. They are usually made in pink and sometimes even have the little green leaf at the base. You'll see them as adornments for sweaters and kids clothes, or even used in topiary standards for the fireplace mantels. I like them too, but I really like them made from tar paper. Why? I don't know exactly, except that the texture is wonderful, and I like the contrast between the tar paper, roofing felt, construction material and the feminine identification with adornment.

The piece on the right uses teeny roses to enhance the bark dress form, which is placed on a monoprint of a leaf image. Just to give you an idea of how to use roses to elevate the mundane to a new level. Shown at Concord Art Association 2006 Members Juried II show.

Anyway, after I had to listen to various people tell me how they didn't understand what I was trying to do, I went and did some research on various meanings for black roses. It turns out there is a famous song "Little Black Rose" the Irish sang back in the 1600s during their battles with the British. Often a woman would give her soldier lover, heading into a doomed battle, a single black rose as an indication of undying love. Many people still consider the black rose a symbol of death or vengenence towards an enemy. But, black roses are also potent symbols of anarchy, dissent and defiance, and are used as tattoos and on flags. And of course they could be used as a symbol for the death of old ideas and habits, especially those that hold one in a rut. C'est moi!

Do black roses really exist? Of course not, despite the extensive effort to breed one. To date, black roses are just very dark blood red, so dark that the shadows appear black.

How I work

2007-01-01T21:06:00.001-05:00

I am a self-taught artist and have been making art off and on for the last 15 years. I develop my ideas by making many variations of what ever I’m working on. The work I did over the course of two years with the Ladies is a good example. I started doing monoprints in 2003 with a vague idea of making skirts, which evolved into making collage figures with paper bag heads that I placed on the monoprints. I worked exclusively with found household papers such as sugar and flour bags, candy and pasta wrappers, torn scraps of wrapping paper, onion bags, and other trash, to create fantastic outfits complete with accessories. I started writing short vignettes and dialogues for backgrounds, and decorated the ladies with hair and faces. By the time I finished with the series in the fall of 2005, I was still writing dialogues illustrated with ladies, but I was also experimenting with contrasts in scale between the foreground and background images.

This particular series was shaped by my fascination with fashion, style and clothing, which I see as tools of cultural assimilation and social camouflage in a world infused with inequitable distributions of power. I’m intensely interested in the contradictions between the outer persona of an individual and their inner experience in small intimate settings. I’ve been haunted with Robert Trivers’ view of evolution: that our survival depends on our capacity for self-deception, not to deny reality, but to avoid detection by an attacking enemy.

Open Window

2006-12-28T18:39:00.001-05:00

I traveled there one summer, a time when I was still ......

16" x 12", acrylic on plywood, 2006

Wake-up Call

2006-12-26T20:45:00.002-05:00

Many years later, when I happened to be cleaning out the basement in preparation for a long overdue move .......

Acrylic on paper, 30" x 22", 2006

After he left #3

2006-12-19T12:01:00.004-05:00

After it was all said and done, I couldn’t say I blamed him. He had his needs and Lord knows ....

Camouflage

2006-12-18T21:27:00.001-05:00

I read that there is a genetic basis for deceit as well as a strong preference for those with a heightened capability for self-deception. It goes like this: A creature under attack learns to disguise itself with camouflage so as to remain undetected by the enemy. The enemy, in need of its prey, becomes ever more skillful at perceiving the prey, even when camouflaged. The creature in turn learns that to remain undetected and alive, he cannot betray his presence with even a breath, and slowly becomes invisible even to its self.....

Goodwill

2006-12-17T12:08:00.001-05:00

He said he loved me and gave me some pearls but I didn’t like his fast talk and said no so he went away. Years later I found the pearls and had them appraised only to find out that the diamond clasp was paste and the pearls weren’t even cultured. I put them in a box labeled trash and gave it to Goodwill.....

Two couples

2006-12-13T14:30:00.002-05:00

That same time when I was in Lucerne, staying at that delightful pension by the lake, the one I told you about that was filled with the Japanese music students visiting for the summer music festival, I treated myself to desert at one of the nearby hotel restaurants......

The Pearls

2006-12-12T20:53:00.001-05:00

It took only a minute, no a second, to realize my mistake.....

Excerpt from August 2005 story.

Blending in

2006-12-09T14:46:00.002-05:00

I’ve left him. Yes, that’s right, left him. Left him to his own devices. Let him figure out how the coffee maker works. Lord knows I couldn’t......

Faux Pas

2006-12-08T10:50:00.003-05:00

It was by far the most spectacular faux pas I had ever witnessed and I’ve seen a few, some of my own making, but nothing compared to this.....

Excerpt from text written on Background of Faux Pas. Shown at Concord Art Association 2005 Roddy Competition.

Lady #29

2006-12-07T11:23:00.001-05:00

You cannot know how I long for your return.....

Excerpt from text written on background for Lady #29, 2004

Lady #20

2006-12-06T21:12:00.001-05:00

I’ve left him, she said, huskily into the phone. It wasn’t working anymore, so I left him to his own devices....

Excerpt from text written on background for Lady #20.

Lady #3

2006-12-05T15:09:00.001-05:00

French silk wallpaper. Wall flower. The perfect accessory. Make something out of nothing. A purse out of a sow’s ear. A closet full of clothes and nothing to wear. All dressed up and no place to go. A ticket to nowhere fast. ........

Portion of text written on background.