Jan Johnson's work simultaneously embraces and rejects the image of the domestic. Growing up in the South, Jan shares a deep tradition of women's domestic activities-quilting, embroidery, samplers and quilling. She learned to "make do" with what one has at home, efficiently and effectively. Her interests lie in the appropriation and subversion of these handiwork techniques. These methods of homespun production were passed down from generation to generation; the crafting of cloths, handkerchiefs and quilled paper forms were gifted to Jan. She thus retains a certain notion of duty to what she has been provided. She lives and works in Lowell, MA.
Why did you decide to pursue art as a career?
It is the best way for me to be authentic. I feel confident in making things and I like thinking about the ideas that are associated with the making. I can make a visual dialogue or a visual poem, a conversation, a monologue, and I get some momentary satisfaction from that. It connects me with the history of art, and also forces me to put my work out there to be seen. I am curious about the span of art as a career and how much I learn as it evolves and changes.
Describe your studio space.
Speaking of evolving and changing, I have moved twice in the past year and so has my studio space. My current studio is in Lowell, MA. I have a lot of boxes where I keep my threads and materials organized and several bags where I can make portable my materials. (Embroidery of a painting was something I did in graduate school and when my daughter was born, it was a pick-up and put-down way for me to keep my practice going.) I have many bookshelves filled with all kinds of books and sketchbooks, and another that is packed with mediums, paints, inks, brushes and supplies. My main area of work is on two tables, one for drawing and the other for my computer and sewing machine. I also have my grandmother's machine in it's own table. I have two walls for working, 7' and 12' wide by 18' high. My sewing machine looks out onto Hamilton Canal and the gate house that controls the water flow into the canal. I live in a historical live/work loft in a mill where a lot of female workers once made cloth. I'm on the fifth floor and can see the American Textile History Museum from my windows.
My space prior was very tight, but sufficient. My drawing table and flat files took up half of my bedroom. I used to lay a lot of drawing out on my bed. My daughter would be asleep in the bed and I would have drawings and materials laid out around her. I tend to work late at night or early morning.
You mentioned in your artist statement for your upcoming show I did not provide the cup, the crafting methods you use were passed down from generation to generation. Based on this particular history, does nostalgia play an integral role in your work?
I am not longing for the past. I am passing on a culture and participating in my culture. I definitely channel my grandmothers. I imagine their world and think of how alike and different I am from them.
I am sorry to hear about your ailing grandmother, is this a source of anxiety that is projected onto your work? How does making art help to control your anxieties and fears?
Thank you. My grandmother passed away two years ago, at 92 after a long illness. She left me many wonderful works and taught me many embroidered stitches, which I integrate into my work. I think the anxiety of wondering whether my brain will fail and my memory will go is part of why I record moments and memories. The process of making does quell fears and anxieties. Obsessiveness is part of that process. It's not something that is always on the surface, but can be underlying. So much of sewing and embroidery is repeating a movement and that adding up of stitches can make something, beautiful or otherwise. Making that beauty can be the opposite of anxiety, and there are areas in my work that are that as well.
The handkerchief pieces are described as flesh-like. Why did you choose to use embroidery and fabric to represent skin?
A handkerchief is a cloth tissue that is kept in one's pocket or near to one's body. They were often embroidered and given as tokens of affection. I learned about the trapunto technique of sewing where the cloth is puffed up to make a textural surface. I began doing that before I knew what that was, and I was interested in making the material puff out and also cave in like skin.
How would you describe your process? Are you very focused when making your embroidery pieces? Do they happen intuitively or are they very structured?
I would say my process is a combination of first acting intuitively and then very structured. I am intensely focused because stitches with thread are small scale moves and I pay attention to what happens on both sides of the cloth. Intuitively, I tend to respond to an image, like the one out of which this work grew. Then I will often use the same structure, a section of it and/or a morphed version of it as a substrate to make an image--so in that sense it is very structured. There are a lot of sources that inform my work.
What were the first materials you worked with? What is your favorite kind of material to work with?
Pencil, charcoal, ink on paper and oil paints on canvas were the first materials that I worked with as an artist. This work grew out of a hard pencil drawing I made and decided I wanted to see as a sewn piece.
My favorite kind of materials are ones that I can really manipulate. I think about different types of line which translates materially to thread. There's a lot one can do with hand-dyed silk embroidery thread: a satin stitch has a lovely sheen, a bullion stitch becomes dimensional, a single in-and-out stitch over one thread of the cloth makes a tiny touch of mark, and the dye of the thread can bleed to the cloth when wetted. The variegated silks are so rich in their colors.
Name a few artists you admire.
Louise Bourgeois, Sheila Hicks, Mary Delaney, Gego, Anna Maria Maiolino.
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