Artist Kim Johnson takes a closer look at Las Vegas
Las Vegas may be a world unto itself.
But there are worlds within that world — and those are the worlds that artist Kim Johnson explores in “No Ordinary Life.”
Johnson’s new solo show at Left of Center Gallery ranges far afield, exploring environments from the desert to downtown.
But it isn’t just their settings that set Johnson’s paintings apart.
Many of them feature clear, unblinking eyes — some with egg-shaped tears in the tear ducts. (Or perhaps they’re tear-shaped eggs … ).
“Everyone asks me about the eyes,” Johnson says. “I’m fascinated with eyes.”
After all, eyes can “look under the microscope” at “a community in a petri dish,” she explains — a process that also can “apply to the human community.”
That process finds its way into her own work, from paintings to an installation she calls “Triage,” featuring wooden branches (which she “ground and sanded and polished” with power tools) suspended from the gallery ceiling.
“For me, it’s very much dealing with cycles of life,” says Johnson, who points out the “earth vessels” beneath each branch. Some contain clay sculptures, other actual bones.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” she muses, noting how the installation’s “abbreviated limbs” dangle “in space, defying gravity.”
Overall, Johnson’s been thinking about art since childhood.
At 6, she “was forming organizations with other kids” to figure out “how could we get our art out.” And, aside from “a couple of retail jobs as a teen,” the Las Vegas native has been pursuing art ever since.
“I have a real affection for the city, watching it evolve,” Johnson says. “Vegas is always changing — and I’m finding that fascinating.”
That fascination seems apparent throughout “No Ordinary Life.”
In one of the exhibit’s “chambers,” dubbed “Strangedays in the Desert — the title echoing Johnson’s website, www.strangedaysandstardust.com — artworks with such titles as “Mad Man” and “Urban Shepherd” reflect the downtown environment where she works at Guerrilla Artz, which she co-founded with her partner in art and life, Ruzo Logic.
“Dealing with folks downtown, mainly homeless people, and getting to know them” definitely has influenced her work, Johnson acknowledges.
“Urban Shepherd,” for example, was inspired by the guardian of a downtown dirt lot, the “caretaker of makeshift homes” on a dirt lot,” she notes, who would “show us where neat objects were.”
Some of those “neat objects” — notably throwaway bits of wood — find their way into Johnson’s work.
“The alleys downtown are fantastic,” she says. “They’re jewels.”
Johnson’s ability to “take a piece of urban salvage and see something in it” gives her work a unique quality, according to Marylou Parker, Left of Center’s gallery director, who’s been “following Kim’s work for a while.”
Johnson and Parker first encountered each other while both were studying at UNLV — Johnson as an undergraduate, Parker a graduate student — and were “mutual admirers of each other’s work,” Parker recalls.
After Parker and Left of Center owner Vicki Richardson saw Johnson’s “Full Bloom” exhibit at the Winchester Cultural Center about a year ago, both agreed that “it was time” for Johnson to exhibit at Left of Center.
Parker also cites the “spiritual” resonance of Johnson’s work, which emerges strongly in the exhibit’s “Lost Community” and “Free Cure” chambers.
The latter includes a “Free Cure Box” (made, naturally, of urban salvage), which debuted at last year’s Life is Beautiful art motel. Visitors fill in prescription-style pads with such self-prescribed cures as “Smells from a creosote bush,” “Great friends who inspire you to do the things that you’re afraid of” and “Laugh everyday!”
In the “Lost Community” chamber, the paintings depict “things that go on beneath the surface,” the artist observes. In the vertical canvases, Johnson stacks images — from a mountain-surrounded lake to pipes, a skull and, inevitably, such recurring motifs as an eye and egg-shaped teardrops — as if they were layers in a cake.
Little wonder Johnson calls it her “cake” room.
“We are many layers,” she explains. “So is the earth.”
The exhibit’s “Natural Cure” chamber, featuring ghostly white paintings layered with latex, wax, canvas and clay, deals “a little bit more directly with bodily references,” Johnson points out — in a gallery that “reminds me of a hospital room.”
Commenting on the eclectic array of materials she uses, the artist describes herself as “a mad scientist” who “like(s) to work with power tools, wax, wrapping materials.”
Throughout, the exhibit’s themed chambers reflect Johnson’s desire “to make it a cohesive experience for viewers,” she notes. “I was wondering, how am I going to put together this journey?”
Johnson’s artistic journey also includes the District Artz program — a downtown-based nonprofit that, among other projects, sponsors monthly mural painting sessions at 21st and Fremont streets with Metropolitan Police Department’s Office of Community Engagement.
And she’s happy to meet by appointment at Left of Center Gallery with anyone who’d like to discuss “No Ordinary Life” — and her life as an artist — during the show’s 2½-month run.
“I have to do it,” Johnson says of the creative life. “It’s how I interpret the world, so I can function in it. If I can provide an experience” for others to share, “that’s one of my dreams.”
Read more from Carol Cling at reviewjournal.com. Contact her at ccling@reviewjournal.com and follow @CarolSCling on Twitter.
Preview
What: Kim Johnson — “No Ordinary Life”
When: Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays through Oct. 1
Where: Left of Center Gallery, 2207 W. Gowan Road, North Las Vegas
Admission: Free (702-647-7378, www.leftofcenterart.org)
