Patricia Johanson's
Personal Statement
As a Bennington student I studied painting, sculpture, architecture,
and design. The dialogue revolved around aesthetics and culture-- an ideal
world far removed from everyday life. Over the years, as the physical size
and ambition of my projects increased, I have gradually incorporated many
extraneous issues into my art, such as communities of flora and fauna,
restored natural ecosystems, functional infrastructure, and solutions to
environmental and social problems such as garbage, sewage, and habitat loss.
I have developed this hybrid art slowly, laboriously, and
independently over a period of forty years, probably in the same way that
Cezanne developed his approach to concrete objects such as an apple or Mont
Sainte-Victoire. I study the subject from as many different angles as
possible, incorporate everything I know about it, and arrive at a composite
solution that is hopefully both aesthetic, factual, and literally useful.
Many of the projects being constructed today were actually designed
years ago and exhibited in art galleries, where they were discussed as
"visionary fantasies". But I have been dogged and persistent, and unwilling
to be relegated to the world of "art history". An artist's traditional role
is to change the way we "see", but I have also wanted to change the way we
"act", and create work that functions as an educational tool, and is of
service to both humanity and the living world.
I believe that art can help us visualise and create concrete
solutions to environmental problems. Each of my projects serves as a model
for an inclusive, mutually-supportive, and self-sustaining world that
combines art, man, and nature. By building such projects we reconnect people
with natural processes and point the way toward art that deals with social
responsibility and communal well-being.