A.I.R.

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I did not provide the cup
Jan Johnson

GALLERY III

November 2 - November 26, 2011

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 3, 2011, 6-9 pm

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. Johnson uses forms and techniques that are at once familiar and foreign, a language laid down with thread, paint, pigment and cut paper. Jan’s improvisational process allows utilitarian objects to develop in an abstract manner. Like quilts, her work sections off areas to house particular histories. Personal geographies, hand-drawn maps, diagrammatic structures, scientific imagery, embroidered samplers, handiwork and love tokens—she responds to all these items in constructing her compositions, both formally and narratively.

View the full Press Release here.