REAL ART GOES FACE-TO-FACE WITH REAL PEOPLE

Ann Johnson

As an instructor with more than 20 years’ experience, Ann Johnson has personally witnessed — and dramatized — the impact social media has made on student-to-student and student-to-instructor conversations with the rise of smartphones.

Johnson, an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been featured nationwide, draws much of the inspiration for her work from her own keen sense of observation. So, the growing lack of face-to-face interaction among students helped spark one of her most recent works: a unique and interactive exhibit titled “Converse: Real Talk,” funded by the Austin-based organization, Women and Their Work. Johnson’s exhibit functions as a research vehicle, revealing the sheer amount of interaction generated by the participants’ direct conversations with one another — contact that cannot occur through social media.

And “Real Talk” covers a full spectrum. The show’s audience is first greeted by a slideshow covering a range of published articles involving topics like, #blacklivesmatter, the transgender restroom debate, the rape allegations against a Stanford University swimmer, and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s “reap what you sow” tweet in the wake of the Orlando massacre. “On the branches of the trees are images of people,” she says. “And on the small leaves are what I call ‘trigger words.’ Things that ignite a conversation. It may say ‘Trumped.’ It may say, ‘flag.’ It may say ‘Gray matters’ referring to Freddie Gray, or ‘A (Sandra) Bland Situation.’

A key inspiration for Converse: Real Talk arose from Johnson often noticing how many people posted malicious comments at the end of articles about President Obama or someone else they disliked — clearly taking advantage of not having to give their real name or address the target person-to-person. “I’d see of all these nasty, snide comments that people would never say to someone face to face,” Johnson said.

But Johnson’s own students were the biggest inspiration for the work. “The students inspired me because they don’t want to speak in class, but they want to send you a 20-page email later,” Johnson says. “Converse: Real Talk is a series of white trees, and under the trees are two white chairs, therefore making the persons in the chair the color of the composition. People sitting in the chairs have to talk to the person in front of them. Because there are images of people watching printed on the leaves, when you sit under the trees, you have an audience.

“On the branches of the trees are images of people,” she says. “And on the small leaves are what I call ‘trigger words.’

It may say ‘Trumped.’ It may say, ‘flag.’ It may say ‘Gray matters’ referring to Freddie Gray, or ‘A (Sandra) Bland Situation.’

Things that ignite a conversation.

– Ann Johnson

CONVERSE: Real Talk

“But you have to speak to each other, so it’s very interactive,” she says. “When I received the grant at Women and Their Work in Austin, Texas, I turned the entire gallery space into a park.”

Converse: Real Talk debuted at Houston Community College and at Texas Southern University later in 2016. Since then, the show has been featured at venues as far away as Syracuse, New York. The show recently played in the inaugural SculptTexas exhibition series in Brenham, Texas and also has been featured at the Galveston Art Center in Galveston, Texas.

Johnson says the turmoil of the 2016 elections helped fuel interest in the exhibit when it was featured through the entire summer of 2016 in Austin, Texas at Women & Their Work. Johnson says she was personally moved by the response. “At Women & Their Work, they told me they’ve never had a response to an exhibition like this. People would come during their lunch breaks and sit down and talk.”

Johnson is a prolific artist who is constantly creating new work when she’s away from the classroom. In 2017, she produced an exhibition inspired by the late Sandra Bland called, “How Do I Say Her Name?” After connecting with a number of other women artists who also had been deeply affected by Bland’s death in 2015, Johnson teamed up with them in putting her exhibition together.

“How Do I Say Her Name?” involved a glass quilt with a police transcript on one side, and on the other side were names of women involved in fatal incidents with police. “We don’t talk about the women like we talk about the men,” Johnson says. “We don’t protest or shut down highways when a woman dies like we do with the men. I thought that was something that needed to be said.”

Johnson is known for doing exhibits in a series format — although the topics have varied over the years. “I’ve always worked in series, but over the last five years or so, it’s been much more activist-oriented,” she says, adding she adheres to the belief of letting your creativity become your activism.

She has done exhibits about the Scottsboro Boys — nine African-American teen-agers accused in 1931 Alabama of raping two white women on a train — and about lynchings, including some that affected her own family history.

Johnson says she wants her work to reach beyond the African-American audience because a recurring problem in so many race-related tragedies is a lack of communication between different groups. “Part of it is, I want to sit in the chair across from a white person, because I want them to hear how this affects me,” she says. “I want to see how you see it, and I’ll show you how I see it.”

From that sentiment, another series has emerged that Johnson is currently working on called, “You Can’t See How You See Me” — involving text embossed on eyeglasses encased in glass bricks.

The themes of Johnson’s work are capricious, but her artistic productivity is a certainty. o