Jan Jonson retrospective at Collective Works Gallery

Watch video of the opening

Jan Johnson - " Reprostective Work " at Collective Works Gallery

Roberto Maralag 3 , Jan Johnson & Diane Kelly at Cedar Hill Gallery

Performance at 8:15 pm

 

 

 

Jan Johnson will be missed !!

To know him is to love him….

 

On Sept.29th, surrounded by friends and family, Jan A. Johnson died quietly at home. He was a strong man, in mind, spirit and body, and he held onto life the same way he lived it. His short struggle with cancer offered a lesson in how to approach death with dignity and grace.  He and Mary were supported by a wonderful team of friends and family, in particular, Mary's sister, Marjorie True, Nurse Practitioner, Dr. Ellen Anderson, Sooke Hospice.

 

Jan’s creativity and humor lives on in his art. A short walk around the house at Pascoe overflows with Jan’s unique vision of the world.  Jan worked in welded steel and found objects, transforming metal detritus into new and challenging pieces to spark the imagination. His themes often took a whimsical approach to the human condition, using irony in steel to examine old and new myths.

Jan’s drive as an artist originated in the surrealistic school of the Indo-China wars.  As a platoon leader in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, he experienced first hand the greed, cruelty, and venality which accompanies war and its political environment.   This drama has fed his artistic inspirations and provided subject material for almost fifty years of work.

Jan was born in Hulette, Wyoming in January of 1943 at the same time his father was in the hospital recovering from being kicked by Blackie, a favorite horse, while out on the ranch caring for the cattle. Jan embodied the wisdom and caution of living in a harsh environment where friends and neighbors were  essential and it was wise to keep in good terms with your neighbors, put tools back in their correct place, and watch for falling rock.

 

Although his art was the center of his life, Jan had a parallel professional life. Living and working internationally as a free-lance transport economist for much of his professional life, Jan was known for his detail analysis, hard work, and ability to befriend people with extremely different backgrounds from himself and from each other.

 

Jan will remain in our memories, creating art wherever he went, be it welding tiny bureaucrats, animated creatures, or angry gods in his shop, sculpting an ear in the kitchen and nose in the bedroom,  composing fleeting creations of rocks and driftwood on the beaches of Sooke, or combining a doll found at the dump with parts of the bicycle he never learned to ride in the yard. There was a special thing that happened when you were sitting at the round table with Jan, in the seats saved from the Jordan River pub. He would twist his mustache or eyebrows, chuckle, and tell stories in his low, melodic voice. Jan brought people together.

There will be a memorial service at the Pascoe home at a later date to be announced.  An award has been set up in Jan’s name to be given at the Sooke Fine Arts Show for best art with a political message. If you would like to participate, please send donations to Sooke Fine Arts Society, Box 471, Sooke, BC  V9Z 1H4 Canada with “Jan Johnson” on the comment line.

please pass the message on to folks you think would be interested.

Mary Alice and Carl Johnsonh and Mija Lee

 

video clip

Jan Johnson at Collective Works Gallery

"Pedestrial Colour" at Slide Room Gallery a group exhibition

Robert Rauschenberg coined the phrase, Pedestrian Colour, to convey his involvement with unconventional art materials and activities related to wandering, watching, collecting and combining. Curator John Luna picks up the trail, observing artists who present unconventional relationships to material and text. Artists include Sean Alward, Marlene Bouchard, Jonathan Dowdall, Alexander Grewal, June Higgins, Michael Jess, Paul La Farge, Nathan Paine and Wendy Welch.

Curator: John Luna,  talk at 8 pm

Opening reception, Friday, May 7 @ 7:30 pm

Miriam Mulhall & Jan Johnson at Collective Works Gallery

Collective Works Gallery presents:

Musings on the ALM sculpture gardens-

one hectare at the edge of Sooke

Photography and Sculpture

Opening Reception: Fri. April 23, 2010

7-9 pm  

Video

Jan Johnson by Debora Alanna

View Full Album

Jan Johnson’s sculpture is climatic. Eight of Johnson’s works contribute to the Urban Settings show at the Dales Gallery. His distinctive welded steel and ‘found objects’ , discarded metal remnants, merge and culminate in constructions that surpass the authenticity of the raw and cast-off matter found in urban locals. Although Johnson’s materials refer to the urban build, he dwells on the exacting experiences that are a consequence of urbanity. Shrewdly, Johnson’s pieces disclose perspicacity. Each an individual world, the works reveal meanings of extensive ideas that result from experiencing an urban life. These sculptures bristle, maximizing the methodical bonding of metal, realizing tantalizing allegory.
With God of Unforeseen Consequences, Johnson may allude to a god like Chacmool, Tenochtitlan – Aztec; however, his work shunts this resemblance with the tree extension from the god’s groin. This work celebrates the outbreak of capacity possible when we acknowledge the mysterious corollary of inspiration.
Garden of Delights involves Hieronymus Bosch’s influence. Johnson’s version minutely renders the delight of cavorting around two exposed, twisting pinnacles and the angst of the never-ending party. The dry vessel that holds this extravaganza remarks on the enchantment of revelry. Too much delight parches our sensibilities. What can purify and cultivate growth of positive spirit, in excess, can desiccate and diminish beauty.
Time Saving Truth From Falsehood is a sculptural parable. The story balances on a corroded disc indicative of a faceless clock, where Time shoulders Truth, impaling Falsehood. Time’s piercing spear forms a style on the plate, where integrity prevailing over perversion perpetually triumphs.
Framing the Birth of Adam in a deteriorated flat screen TV, we become privy to the entrapment of a legendary numinous event. Bedraggled hangings enmesh lounging Adam and the pointing finger that brought him to life. Johnson makes us voyeurs to this dilapidated launch. This version of Adam’s birth is a commentary on our need to see an event on TV to believe its veracity, and the decay of belief in a mystical spectacle.
Market Goddess rules over the minions scrambling up a mechanism of archaic commerce, the oxidized innards of a metal cash register. Sycophants cluster in the backside, as well. Johnson’s edifice shows how ruthless business belittles those that worship money.
Johnson is at ease constructing universal concepts, capturing the core of metaphor, symbol and more. Sinews of metallic components, elaborately wrought, produce sumptuous contributions to our understanding of disproportionate regulation (Policy Machine), susceptibility to opportunism (Arc) and the isolating disclosure of influence (Trinity). Johnson’s sculptures are encapsulated chronicles intricately told.
© Debora Alanna
Urban Settings: Jan Johnson sculpture with abstract paintings by Ira Hoffecker
Dales Gallery -537 Fisgard St, Victoria BC 
8 April – 4 May 2010   Video

Ira Hoffecker and Jan Johnson at Dales Gallery

URBAN SETTINGS

Abstract paintings
Ira Hoffecker

Sculpture
Jan Johnson

Opening Reception April 8, 2010 7-9pm

Peter Rockwell and Jan Johnson at Collective Works Gallery

Pete Rockwell, photographer and chronicler of societal dysfunction, and Jan Johnson, metal sculptor of sardonic figurative works, have joined forces to present their work at Collective Works Gallery in Fernwood, January 15 – 30, 2010.
Opening Reception Fri.Jan. 15 @ 7pm