Carla Rae Johnson

Carla Rae Johnson’s artworks include sculpture, drawing, conceptual, performance, and installation art. She is a 2017 New York State Council on the Arts/New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellow in Drawing, a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Sculpture, and a 1990 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Her work has been exhibited in 25 solo exhibitions, and over 140 exhibitions and events in museums and galleries nationally, in New York State and New York City.

Carla Rae Johnson has a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Iowa. After over 38 years as an arts educator, Carla Rae retired from her position as a Full Professor of Art in 2016. She now devotes her full-time energies to art and activism.

Artist’s Statement

I should have been a poet. I conjure metaphors. Visual/verbal connections combine forces to unleash ideas and address the state of things. Metaphors layer conscious and subconscious, poetic and commonplace realities. Metaphors enhance communication of hard truths and today, more than ever, hard truths need to be confronted.

I should have been a jester. The artist as ‘fool’ can practice truth, wrap it in humor, and deliver it to the court. Humor is particularly effective in addressing issues of social justice.

I should have been a carpenter. The smell of wood brings comfort. Attention to detail brings its own rewards. Each work is brought to a level of completion that serves its content and my intentions; no more, no less. With the exception of occasional found objects, I craft all of the work, myself. I use beauty and simplicity to attract, then challenge viewers with ideas.

Making art is for me imparting a singular gift. My work doesn’t neatly fit any trend within the defining art establishment. It is neither formalist nor purely conceptual, neither abstract nor figurative, neither narrative nor surrealist, though it borrows from each of these traditions. For me, it is in the interstices between formal categories that exciting tensions, reciprocating energies, and my artworks reside.

My work is always connected to ideas, more often than not addressing issues of social, political, historical, or cultural import. As an artist, I find the most challenging forms and concepts at the intersection of the visual and the verbal. I delight in communicating insights with humor, word-play, and not just a little irony. My art works include: sculpture, installations, interactive art, drawings, collaborations, and performances. I choose materials and formats to fit ideas. I thrive in the solitude of the studio, and, also, in collaboration with other creative artists.

“No ideas but in things…” William Carlos Williams