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Sunday, November 16, 2003
Not in Kansas anymore: Once wandering artist finds home in Maine
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||||||||
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Also on this page: ABOUT 'ZERO PORTFOLIO' | |||||||||
LEWISTON — When Pamela Johnson was a little girl, her grandmother gave her a gift of money. As the family gathered around the table, someone asked Johnson what she intended to buy with her bounty. The girl never hesitated: "Samsonite," she said. Luggage in hand, Johnson has been on the move almost ever since. From the time she turned 18, the painter and printmaker figures she has moved an average of every other year. Now 45 and feeling remarkably ensconced as an art professor at Bates College, the Kansas native is confident she can set her luggage aside. She's found a home in Maine. "I saw the ocean and needed to be near the ocean. I needed to live in the landscape rather than just visit it," says Johnson. A Maine resident for five years, the Lewiston artist ratchets her profile up a notch this week when she shows her work in Portland for the first time. Johnson will display a series of recently completed black-and-white prints as part of the "Zero Portfolio" group exhibition at the Portland gallery Zero Station, opening Saturday. Johnson is among 28 artists who will participate in the show, which will encompass progressive works on paper, including photography, drawing, printing and painting. "Bates is my patron, but I live in Maine," Johnson says, explaining her quest for greater public awareness of her work. "Portland is part of my community, too. Portland may not know it yet, but I know it." Johnson's first trip to Maine was in 1986, when she spent the summer at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. It was a cathartic, affirming experience. The best artists and art critics came to the campus over the course of the summer, and Johnson soaked up their knowledge and wisdom. In one week alone, she received 17 critiques of her work. It changed her life, from both a personal and professional perspective. She became a better artist and fell deeply in love with the landscape. She committed herself to making her home here. It's taken a few years, with stops along the way in Vermont, Boston and New York, among other places. For two years in New York City, Johnson worked as a personal assistant to the artist Helen Frankenthaler, helping her prepare and execute a massive touring retrospective exhibition. But two years was enough. It was high pressure, high stress and also highly rewarding. Johnson learned about the inner workings of the New York art world, but needed a respite. She left the city for Ipswich, Mass., where she baked pies at an apple orchard and taught art in Boston. She jumped at the chance to teach at Bates, replacing the college's art department founder, Donald Lent. Teaching at a liberal arts college in an art-rich state has proven to be immensely satisfying. She is enriched by the academic community and has sufficient time to practice her art. She maintains a studio on campus and a series of studios, each dedicated to a different aspect of her work, at her home in Lewiston. The circumstances allow her to immerse herself in what she loves the most. "I'm breathing it all the time," she says of her art. "My basic rule is, however much time I spend away from the studio with other types of work, I spend at least that much time in the studio. I try to strike the balance to live the type of life I want to lead." Best known as a painter, Johnson has been making prints for 25 years. The recent black-and-white prints represent the beginning of a new cycle of work that is a logical outgrowth of her Snow White series of paintings, to which she dedicated the better part of four years. The Snow White series speaks to Johnson's interest in the transition from girlhood to womanhood and her lifelong fascination with fairy tales. The notion of fairy tales is present in her new work, so she suspects her recent prints spring from the same well. The final result of her artistic process is yet to be seen. The prints - there are eight in the Zero Station show - are the very beginning of the process, she explains. "I don't know where I am going, but I know if I persist, it will all come out," she says. Johnson prefers to start the process by making prints, because they are primal. She practices dry-point etching, which means she creates her images by drawing on metal with a fine, sharp tool, embedding lines into the hard surface. Those lines later are filled with ink. As the paper is pressed over the metal plate, the image emerges in black and white. Printmaking is a good place to start, she says, because it is a pure form of expression. It's tactile, sensual and completely honest, she says. Nearly all the great painters in the history of art also made prints, Johnson notes. "It really illuminates the process. When I am painting, you see the final decisions. The layers beneath are not available to you the viewer or me the maker. With printmaking, you get a record of all the decisions along the way. It's an opportunity to see how you make choices and evolve your work. It's a way to study yourself." Aimee Bessire met Johnson at Bates. Bessire, who now teaches at Maine College of Art, was a visiting faculty member at Bates during Johnson's first year on campus. As the two became friends, Bessire became enraptured by Johnson's work. The artist's interest in poetry and music surfaced often in her paintings, and Bessire was captivated by Johnson's intellectual process. She creates art without boundaries, meshing her various interests into a particular piece or a series of related works, Bessire says. Zero Station owner Keith Fitzgerald has admired Johnson's prints for several years. He appreciates the simplicity of what he calls Johnson's mark making - how the ink grabs the bite of her etched lines and the image that results. "It's kind of a bland thing to say, but with her work it's really about making a certain mark and how it brings you into the medium itself. It's not about a specific image, but about bringing you into the piece. Her prints are pretty much all about mark making, and they are very juicy," he says. Johnson's prints in the Zero Station show are free form. Some appear as nothing more than a series of shapes, with vague images emerging from the recesses of the dark lines. Others are easily recognizable and fully formed, such as a pair of ponytails. "It's a very sculptural way to work in a two-dimensional form," Johnson says. "There is an intensity you can bring to it, where you would shred a piece of paper. But metal will hold up. Prints help me to take risks." Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or at:
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