Unseen Traces

The Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium

Plains Art Museum will host the work of Ann Johnson in the exhibition Unseen Traces in the Work of Ann Johnson. Reflecting on her 2022 Lawndale Contemporary Art Center installation, See Me, Ann “Sole Sister” Johnson is matter-a-fact about the intent: “This is about being seen. Seeing the women in the shadows.”

Incorporating experimental printmaking on found objects to produce “work that breathes conversation” and “question humanity,” Ann “Sole Sister” Johnson occupies that threshold between ancestral legacies and historical futures. The artist, Ann Johnson, occupies a space—on, among, and with ancestral spirits—that is at once both “magical and distressing,” to bring forth artistic work that examines family, community, and Black Womanhood. In so doing, it interrogates what it means to survive in a world when that world itself “is too damn much.” Consequently, Ann “Sole Sister” Johnson pursues these “traces”—the mark of the absence of a presence. Therefore, she presents us with an intricate polymer intaglio process “on cotton and infuses an assimilation of found objects with contemporary imagery. With other poignant processes Johnson honors those women in the shadows and captures “layers and levels of womanhood” via a “transfer printmaking process on vintage and aged-metal ironing boards.” She discerns and embraces the intimacies of family portraits and personal stories by rendering them legible against the surfaces of objects that hold symbolic and historical significance.

Born in London, England, UK, and raised in Wyoming, USA, Ann Johnson received her MA in Humanities (University of Houston-Clear Lake) as well as her MFA from the Academy of Art University (San Francisco) with a concentration in printmaking. Her work has been exhibited at: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Museum of Printing History, Houston, TX; Women and Their Work Gallery, Austin, TX; Project Row Houses, Houston, TX; Tisdale Beach Institute, Savannah, GA; Charles H. Wright Museum, Flint, MI; The Apex Museum, Atlanta, GA; and, at the California African American Art Museum located in Los Angeles, CA.

Plains Art Museum thanks our generous PlainsArt4All members and donors, and our Organizational Partners for their support. Additional support provided by The McKnight Foundation, Bush Foundation, The Arts Partnership, The FUNd at Plains Art Museum, and the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funds from the North Dakota Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts

1: Ann Johnson, Time Won’t Give Me Time, 2021, intaglio on raw cotton, found objects • 2: Ann Johnson, Injurious George from the auction block series, 2021, intaglio on raw cotton, transfer print, fabric, found objects

Writing the Self: Poetics and Portraits
Four Sessions: Sundays January 29, February 5, 9, 16, 26, 1-4 PM
Special Guest Teaching Artists: Ann “Sole Sister” Johnson & Stephanie Lemmer

Are you interested in visual art (printmaking, collage, assemblage, drawing, and photography) and writing (narrative self-reflection)? Join Plains Art Museum every Sunday beginning on January 29th through February 26th for an experimental conceptual art program that will explore and examine identity and social issues while also addressing self-awareness, confidence, and leadership potential for young women who embrace, embody, and declare different identities. For each session, teaching artists will guide participants as they engage with themes around identity, self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-potential by asking participants to respond to an array of cultural texts (artworks, lyric song, and poetic verse). During the five weeks, participants will construct a “self” that takes into account both written and visual creative activity. This creative activity will be assembled, documented, and chronicled into Art books produced by participants. All materials and supply costs for this program will be provided. Ages 16+ are welcomed. We exercise respect among ourselves.