Interview with Sue Johnson
Interview with Sue Johnson about Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines VisArts Exhibiting Artist from September 11th – January 3rd, 2021 interviewed by Megan Koeppel, the VisArts Exhibition Programming Coordinator Sue Johnson (b. San Francisco, CA) earned an MFA in Painting from Columbia University and a BFA in Painting from Syracuse University, and studied painting in London, England and Florence, Italy with Syracuse University. To learn more about Sue & her work visit suejohnson1.com When did you first realize that Art was a primary part of your life? I grew up in a family that embraced art and artists making things. While my mother didn’t pursue a professional life in the arts, she worked in drawing, ceramics and mosaics as a significant activity throughout my childhood. My brothers and I always had art supplies and a place to work, the family went to museums and the theater, and we traveled to historical places in the US by car a lot. In high school I had an opportunity to go to France for a spring break trip, and that whet my appetite to study abroad in college, which I did. On that first trip my memories are very clear — the Louvre (one of my favorite paintings remains Gericault’s enormous The Raft of the Medusa), L’Orangerie (where I saw Monet’s immersive installation of his waterlilies) and visiting Montmartre (where my imagination recreated the turn of the 20th century art scene there with Picasso and Braque at work and café scene). It was the experience of studying abroad in London for my junior year followed by summer in Florence and traveling some in Italy – seeing so much art in person, being introduced to practicing artists, the independence of that year – it was then that I decided to change my major to painting and from then onwards, art has been my path. Of course, I didn’t know what I was getting into, but a year later when I had been accepted into the MFA program at Columbia University, I moved to New York, and just kept moving forward. Did you ever consider another path other than visual art? Indeed, I did. During high school I remember distinctly to this day, I was poring over my art teacher’s book on Picasso and being very aware of my gender and that I didn’t see many women in the role of artist and saying to myself – this isn’t what women can do – I just couldn’t see myself pursuing art in that way. Balancing that, my mother always wanted me to be an artist, and I also suppose that being a teenage contrarian, I tried to become something else. Going into college, I thought I would pursue creative writing or psychology, and I always had an affinity and curiosity about the world of advertising. I first attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College initially focusing on psychology and writing courses as well as taking art courses. Very quickly in my first semester I realized, actually, I did want to study art with the thought that maybe I could become an artist – or be in the arts in some way. I transferred into the advertising program at Syracuse University. A year later by the time I was studying abroad I realized I was devoting more of my energies to painting and drawing classes instead of advertising classes – and I changed my major to painting. /x/lc-content/uploads/2020/10/Johnson_Staley_Small_PourMe_23MG.tif How were you working as a fine artist, while also working to make money? Were you an educator after graduating? During graduate school I worked as a studio assistant for Arlene Slavin, who was a pattern painter at the time – and a great role model. Later, I worked at Lincoln Center at the gallery there, and through some twists of fate became the gallery director after a few years. It wasn’t until after graduate school, that I thought about teaching. To put it into context, it was the 1970s and with a very few exceptions, all my professors were men. I never thought of myself as having that kind of role for myself when I was in school. Some grad school friends and I began to apply for teaching jobs, and I was very fortunate to get a full-time teaching job when I just twenty-six. It was a bit of a leap of faith – I left New York City, my job at Lincoln Center, and the loft I helped renovate in Hoboken, NJ. I moved to Indianapolis, Indiana to teach at the Herron School of Art. The job was just for two years, but even so, I got a great deal of work done in the studio and had eight solo shows in those 2 years. This was my first time in the Midwest and the proximity to Chicago introduced me to artists I hadn’t known about before – Chicago Imagists and the Hairy Who. My painting at the time was more abstract than representational though it was based on scientific and natural history images and popular culture, and it was at this time that I started to use found materials like linoleum tiles and plastic objects merged with paintings to create installations. When I returned to New York, I found studio space and an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and about five years later moved back to Manhattan on the Lower East Side. My work started to be shown in alternative spaces like White Columns and Art in General and commercial galleries – Jill Newhouse Gallery, Stiebel Modern and Ruth Seigel Gallery. I taught as an adjunct at Parsons School of Design and Marymount Manhattan College, and also worked in custom framing, did freelance work in the home furnishings industry by hand-painting textile patterns, and for five years was the Program Coordinator for Triangle Artists’ Workshop. I was cobbling together a lot of part-time work to keep living and working in the city. I loved living in New York – it was an amazing time.