Indira Freitas Johnson

Last updated

Indira Freitas Johnson
Born
Indira Freitas Johnson

1943

Indira Freitas Johnson (born 1943) is an artist and nonviolence educator.

Contents

Johnson was born and raised in Mumbai, India and received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of Mumbai in 1964, and a four-year diploma in Applied Arts from Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art in 1964. [1] In 1965, Johnson was awarded a grant to study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she received a Master of Fine Arts in 1967. [1] Johnson was invited to teach graduate level classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Ceramic Sculpture in 1998 and at the Rhode Island School of Design in Public Art in 2001.

Johnson is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Governor's Award for the Arts, Kohler Company Arts and Industry Grant, Arts ConText, Rhode Island School of Design Museum and the Pew Charitable Trust, Arts International Travelling Fellowship, Raven Foundation, and the Illinois Arts Council. [2] [3]

Johnson's work is represented in numerous major public and private collections including: Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Asian American Arts Centre in New York, Rhode Island School of Design Museum in Providence, Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile Alabama, State of Illinois Building in Chicago, Ankor Consultants in Brussels, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Arkansas Arts Center and Decorative Arts Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas, University of Illinois Law School in Carbondale, Illinois, SHARE in Mumbai India, High Museum of Art in Atlanta GA, Air India Corporation in Mumbai, India, Kohler Company in Sheboygan Wisconsin, and Garden/Varelli in Mumbai India. [1]

Public art projects

As an artist, Johnson's identity has evolved as part sculptor, cultural worker, peace activist and educator. [4] Her numerous studio art work and community engaged projects explore an array of social issues including the cultural dimension of domestic violence, leprosy health education, labor, the environment, gender, peace, nonviolence and literacy. [4] They follow the "call and response" tradition that is prevalent in many cultures. She puts out a call and the community responds so that the final artwork is a hybrid that depends on and is completed by community interaction.

Her public art projects include:

Selected solo exhibitions

Selected group exhibitions

Residencies

Additional work

In 1993, in response to ethnic violence in the world, Johnson founded Shanti Foundation for Peace, whose mission is to use the processes of art to help people understand that their individual action can make a difference in the world. Since then Johnson has been teaching art and nonviolence decision-making skills to children in Chicago and Evanston area public schools. [12]

In addition, Johnson has shared creativity and knowledge with numerous groups including Chicago Historical Society, Loyola University, Chicago, IL, Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN, and in 2017 participated on "The Power of Individual Action", TEDx Columbia College Chicago. She was a Round Table Presenter at the 4th International Congress of Educating Cities, The Arts and Humanities As Agents of Social Change, Keynote speaker for Drawing Art Together, Sponsored by Getty Center for Education, a panelist at Daughters of Revolution: Gender, Ethnicity, Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH 1992, Multi-Ethnic Voices and Main Stream [ sic ] Aesthetics Chicago International New Art Forms Expo. Chicago, 1990.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Hunt (sculptor)</span> American artist and sculptor

Richard Howard Hunt is an American sculptor. In the second half of the 20th century, he became "the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture." Hunt, the descendant of enslaved people brought through the port of Savannah from West Africa, studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s, and while there received multiple prizes for his work. He was the first African American sculptor to have a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Hunt has created over 160 public sculpture commissions in prominent locations in 24 states across the United States, more than any other sculptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Barcus Slonina</span>

Robin Slonina is a multi-disciplinary, contemporary artist.

Sandra Binion is a Swedish-American artist based in Chicago whose artistic practice includes fine-art exhibitions, multimedia installations involving, and performance art. Her work has been performed and exhibited at museums, galleries, theaters, and festivals in the US, Europe, and Japan. Some of the venues that have featured her work include the Evanston Art Center, Link's Hall, Kunstraum (Stuttgart), The Goodman Theatre, and Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art.

Dale Threlkeld is an artist who has exhibited his oil paintings in galleries in New York City as well as competitions throughout the United States.

Vincent Como is a Brooklyn-based visual artist. His work is rooted in Minimalism, Conceptual Art, and Color Field Painting with a specific focus toward Black. Como has referenced the influence of Ad Reinhardt and Kasimir Malevich, as well as movements such as the Italian Arte Povera movement from the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne Wilson (artist)</span> American artist

Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art to other media. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Raymond "Ray" Kakuo Yoshida was an American artist known for his paintings and collages, and for his contributions as a teacher at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1959 to 2005. He was an important mentor of the Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who specialized in distorted, emotional representational art.

Carlos Javier Ortiz is an American director, cinematographer and photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria Fuller (artist)</span>

Victoria Barrett Fuller is an American artist, sculptor, natural science illustrator, and award-winning singer, songwriter, and musician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Nakoneczny</span> American artist

Michael Nakoneczny is an American artist. He lived in Chicago for over twenty years. He is currently teaching painting at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Alaska. Michael has received numerous awards including a Rasmuson Foundation Grant, Illinois Art Council Fellowship and an Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Fellowship. He received a BFA from Cleveland State University and an MFA from the University of Cincinnati. Michael Nakoneczny is represented by Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, Inc., Chicago, IL. and Grover Thurston Gallery in Seattle, WA.

Greg Constantine is a contemporary Canadian-American artist who currently lives and works in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

Ten Thousand Ripples (TTR) is a collaborative public art, civic engagement and peace project. It uses art as a catalyst to foster dialogue about peace and non-violence, and create innovative solutions to address contemporary social issues. Through TTR, artists, neighborhood leaders, and residents are at the heart of community-driven planning and public involvement efforts. At the center of TTR are 100 fiberglass and resin Buddha sculptures, each weighed down with a few hundred pounds of concrete, designed by Indira Johnson and installed in sites in 10 Chicago area neighborhoods.

Calvin Bell Jones was an afrocentric visual artist and a Black Arts Movement activist from Chicago. He is known primarily for his nine murals and paintings.

Jack Earl is an American ceramic artist and former teacher, known for drawing inspiration from his home state of Ohio to create rural pieces “with meticulous craftsmanship and astute details… to where you could smell the air, hear the silence and swat the flies.” Although his works hint at highly personal, intellectual, and narrative themes in an almost unsettling manner, Earl is “a self-described anti-intellectual who shuns the art world." He is known particularly for using his trademark format, the dos-a-dos : “This art form is like a book with two stories… the two seemingly incongruent images prompt the viewer to fill in the conceptual gap through poetic speculation.” His work often involves dogs or the character “Bill”, who is said to be a combination of Earl’s father-in-law, himself, and others. The titles to his pieces are typically lengthy, stream-of-consciousness narratives that suggest the folk or rural lifestyle. These are intended to add another dimension to the artwork. His work has received a notable response over his decades-long career, especially since he is regarded as “a master at reminding us that within the events we take for granted are moments of never-ending mystery and wonder.” Earl continues to live in Lakeview, Ohio with his wife, Fairlie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corey Postiglione</span> American painter

Corey Postiglione is an American artist, art critic and educator. He is a member of the American Abstract Artists in New York, and known for precise, often minimalist work that "both spans and explores the collective passage from modernism to postmodernism" in contemporary art practice and theory. New Art Examiner co-founder Jane Allen, writing in 1976, described him as "an important influence on the development of contemporary Chicago abstraction." In 2008, Chicago Tribuneart critic Alan G. Artner wrote "Postiglione has created a strong, consistent body of work that developed in cycles, now edging closer to representation, now moving further away, but remaining rigorous in approach to form as well as seductive in markmaking and color."

The Evanston Art Center is an arts center in Evanston, Illinois offering classes, lectures, exhibitions, and community outreach. It is among the oldest and largest arts centers in Illinois.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eleanor Himmelfarb</span> American painter, educator and conservationist

Eleanor Gorecki Himmelfarb was an American artist, teacher and conservationist known for semi-abstract paintings that reference the landscape and human figure, and for her work protecting woodlands in DuPage County, Illinois. She studied art history and design at the University of Chicago, natural history at the Morton Arboretum, and fine art at the Art Institute of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago. Critics characterize Himmelfarb as a modernist, who explored her subjects metaphorically through complex rhythmic compositions, stylized forms, and subtle coloration. Her work was featured in solo shows at the Evanston Art Center (retrospective), University Club of Chicago and Sioux City Art Center, and group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Cultural Center, and Renaissance Society. Himmelfarb taught painting and design for four decades at several institutions, including over 30 years at the DuPage Art League. She was married to the painter, Sam Himmelfarb, and helped him design their house, the Samuel and Eleanor Himmelfarb Home and Studio in Winfield, Illinois, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Their son, John Himmelfarb, and grandchild, Serena Aurora, are also artists. Himmelfarb died at age 98 in Winfield in 2009.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurie Hogin</span> American painter

Laurie Hogin is an American artist, known for allegorical paintings of mutant animals and plants that rework the tropes and exacting styles of Neoclassical art in order to critique, parody or call attention to contemporary and historical mythologies, systems of power, and human experience and variety. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, International Print Center New York, and Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati. Her work belongs to the art collections of the New York Public Library, MacArthur Foundation, Addison Gallery of American Art, and Illinois State Museum, among others. Critic Donald Kuspit described her work as both painted with "a deceptive, crafty beauty" and "sardonically aggressive" in its use of animal stand-ins to critique humanity; Ann Wiens characterized her "roiling compositions of barely controlled flora and fauna" as "shrewdly employing art historical concepts of beauty for their subversive potential." Hogin is Professor and Chair of the Studio Art Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Joan Livingstone is an American contemporary artist, educator, curator, and author based in Chicago. She creates sculptural objects, installations, prints, and collages that reference the human body and bodily experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Goodman</span> American sculptor

Neil Goodman is an American sculptor and educator, known for bronze works that combine elegant arrangements and forms with hand-wrought, textured surfaces. He has explored a wide range of formats—still-life compositions, wall and floor installations, free-standing works and monumental public art—in a formalist style that has evolved from spare representation to abstraction and minimalism.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Weigel, Jenniffer (9 November 2013). "Indira Freitas Johnson, Evanston Artist: Artist-sculptor wants her works to promote peace, and inspire social change". Chicago Tribune.
  2. Ross, Suzanne (12 September 2013). "REVISITING THE BUDDHA: CHECKING IN WITH INDIRA JOHNSON". The Raven Foundation.
  3. Smith, Cindy. "Indira Freitas Johnson Hand in Hand; Opposition and Unity". Parkland Art Gallery. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  4. 1 2 "Indira Freitas Johnson". University of Michigan, School of Art and Design. 12 November 2013.
  5. "Haein Art Project". Art Oxygen. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  6. Yo-rim, Cha. "Temple project promises journey of self-exploration". Korea Herald. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  7. Brachear, Manya (5 June 2013). "100 Buddhas rise from vacant lots". Chicago Tribune .
  8. McKean, Lise. "Indira Johnson". Lise McKean. Retrieved 20 February 2014.
  9. ""Growing Peace" - Indira Johnson's fields art project in Oregon, IL". Asian American Arts Centre. 13 July 2011.
  10. Michener, Julie (17 February 2009). "Dale and Mary Mrnak Memorial Visiting Artist shares art's role in social justice and peace-making with community". St. Kate's News.
  11. "I Can't, Yes I Can: Discovering Strength, Shifting Perceptions". Marketplace: Handwork of India. 19 June 2013.
  12. "Shanti Foundation for Peace". Chicago Community Trust. Archived from the original on 26 February 2014. Retrieved 20 February 2014.