Patricia Johanson
Encyclopedia
Patricia Johanson
Patricia Johanson is known for her large-scale art projects that create aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife. She designs her functional art projects, created with and in the natural landscape
, to solve infrastructure and environmental problems, but also to reconnect city-dwellers with nature and with the history of a place. These project designs date from 1969, making her a pioneer in the field of ecological-art (or eco-art.) Johanson’s work has also been classified as Land Art
, Environmental Art
, Site-specific Art and Garden Art. Her early paintings and sculptures are part of Minimalism
.
parks. Her mother, a former model, introduced her to the arts. As a high school student, she excelled at music, but at Bennington College
(1958–1962) she was a painting major.
Through her contacts at Bennington, Johanson became part of the 1960s New-York art-world. Her Bennington instructor, Tony Smith (sculptor)
, was a close friend and her art-history professor, Eugene Goossen, a mentor and later her husband. At this time she met fellow-artists Kenneth Noland
, David Smith (sculptor)
, Helen Frankenthaler
, Franz Kline
, Philip Guston
and Joseph Cornell
. She also came to know art-critic Clement Greenberg
and visionary architect Frederick John Kiesler
.
Johanson earned a Master’s in art history at Hunter College
, New York in 1964. There she studied with Tony Smith, Eugene Goossen and Ad Reinhardt
and met fellow art students Robert Morris
, Carl Andre
and Robert Barry
. At this time, she worked as a researcher for New York publisher Benjamin Blom on a compendium of 18th and 19th century American artists. The project led to an opportunity to catalogue the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, who became an important mentor.
Her husband, art critic and historian Eugene Goossen
, died in 1997.
and they were included in some of the earliest shows of Minimal Art: “8 Young Artists” (1964), “Distillation” (1966) and “Cool Art” (1968). Her Minimalist paintings used simple lines to explore the optical effects of color. These were shown at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery
in New York in the 1960s and her 28 feet (8.5 m) oil painting, William Clark, was included in the1968 Museum of Modern Art
contemporary art survey, “The Art of the Real”
Johanson began making large-scale, Minimal sculpture in 1966 with William Rush, consisting of 200 feet (61 m) of painted steel tee-beams laid flat in a clearing. In 1968 she increased her scale to 1600 feet (487.7 m) with Stephen Long (inspired by the 19th century topographical and railway engineer
), where 2 foot (0.6096 m), painted plywood segments were installed along an abandoned railroad track in Buskirk, New York. This was followed by other large-scale Minimalist sculptures sited outdoors. Johanson’s Minimalst sculptures introduced the idea of artworks that cannot be experienced all at once, still an important value in her work.
Cyrus Field (1970–71), while still a large Minimalist sculpture, marks a transition. Using marble, cement and redwood slabs in their natural state, she created a maze of lines that lead visitors through a forest to reveal the changing, natural landscape
. With this piece she began thinking of line as a compositional device to incorporate, rather than displace, nature. She also invented a way to mediate between human scale and the vastness of nature.
Johanson’s move from making objects to working with the natural world—at first in drawings and later in actual commissions—has parallels (as well as differences) with the emergence of Earthworks by artists in her circle of friends, such as Robert Smithson
and Nancy Holt
. The similarity is working large-scale with the land itself. A difference is that many of Johanson’s designs were meant to serve practical functions, such as flood control, habitat for local wildlife, and green roofs that absorb rainwater. Johanson also designed for urban, rather than remote locations. Another difference is that most of her designs are dominated by a simple, large image of a plant or animal.
The House and Garden designs mark a reorientation in Johanson’s career. She gave up painting and sculpture and now focused on designs that are simultaneously art and landscape To prepare herself for translating project designs into large-scale sculptural landscapes, she began studying civil engineering and architecture at City College School of Architecture, New York, in 1971, receiving her B. Arch. in 1977.
Her solution was to make tiny drawings of plants during the day and at night to transform them into designs for large-scale projects. At this time, she also studied botany texts. This was a new process: instead of depending on inspiration, she rendered nature in a straightforward way.
photographs of O’Keeffe.
's Leonhardt Lagoon, which was then in a badly degraded state. To solve the problems of an eroded shoreline, murky water and algal bloom
, Johanson devised large sculptural forms that broke up wave action and selected indigenous plantings as microhabitats for wildlife. The gigantic, terra cotta-colored gunite sculptures, which doubled as pathways for human visitors and perches for birds and turtles, take the form of a Delta Duck-potato (Sagittaria
platyphylla) and a Spider Brake Fern (Pteris multifida). Today Leonhardt Lagoon is a functioning ecosystem in the heart of Dallas, where it also serves as a place of education and recreation. This is one of the earliest examples of art as bioremediation
. For this and other large-scale urban projects, she works with a variety of experts, including scientists, engineers, and city planners, as well as local citizen groups.
. The head of the serpent is a 20 feet (6.1 m) mound that serves as a microhabitat for butterflies. The Ribbon Worm Tidal Steps fills with water at high tide, creating homes for small marine life.
and to create a project for a park in the Amazon Rainforest
. Her model for this shows a 150 feet (45.7 m) ramp, in the form of a Brazilian aerial plant, that allows visitors to experience a range of microhabitats at various levels. The ramp itself is intended to become encrusted by tropical vegetation. This project has been disrupted several times by changes in government and is currently on hold.
economy. Johanson developed a master plan to connect disparate neighborhoods and districts and to restore ecological functioning. Since Rocky Marciano
is a Brockton celebrity, she planned to use his training routes as a way to connect neighborhoods and nature. The Rocky Marciano Trail begins at the Marciano home and leads visitors to various “magnet sites,’‘ such as Thomas McNulty Park and Battery Wagner, both enhanced by Johanson’s cultural and environmental designs. She also planned to daylight the many buried or disrupted streams throughout the town and to revive forest corridors to create a continuous public landscape. This project was rejected by the city of Brockton.
’s main dumpsite, which closed in 1990. To reclaim the site her idea was to transform it into a park and to restore ecological communities. As a unifying image, she chose the haetae
, a mythical animal that wards off evil. She borrowed decorative patterns of haetae sculptures to create designs for terraces, microhabitats, and pedestrian and vehicle access to the summits.
design team, Johanson helped create a new water treatment facility. By overlaying art, public access, sewage treatment, habitat restorations, and agriculture, she embedded major urban infrastructure within living nature. Her design has been credited with "re-inventing art and reforming civil engineering". The project includes natural systems to treat sewage, allowing millions of gallons of water to be reused. Johanson used the form of the endangered Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse
to create the shapes of the polishing ponds, which contain islands that direct the flow of water and provide nesting habitat for birds. Other plantings support local wildlife. An additional 230 acre (0.9307778 km²) area of tidal wetlands was acquired for the park and wildlife sanctuary. This multi-purpose landscape provides more than 3 miles (4.8 km) of walking trails for educational programs, nature study and tourism. Petaluma Wetlands Park coincides with a $150 million dollar sewage treatment facility, while also serving as a highly visible model for converting sewage into recycled water, which is stored in a deep reservoir at the end of the "mouse's tail".
) and rattlesnake are planned to structure the areas to east and west of 1300 East. They serve practical, infrastructure functions, with plantings to support local wildlife. The lily is simultaneously art, overlook, trail and plaza, while the snake design serves as retaining walls, waterfalls, paths and ponds. The underpass will mimic a Utah canyon, with embedded coal seams and fossil formations. The design is multilayered, with references to local ecology, geology and history, offering visitors opportunities to connect in a variety of ways.
“Johanson’s working model is the ecosystem and survival is her core theme, one she knows all too well, personally and politically”.
“Patricia Johanson was one of the first artists to think of art as a means to restore habitats and her work is an outstanding model for maintaining biodiversity. By creating art that revitalizes natural ecosystems and introduces them to urban dwellers, she has become an innovator in art, ecology, and urban renewal.”
“Johanson teaches that artists can be vital, visionary forces in creating social and environmental change.”
“A major theme in my work from the beginning has been to reconnect city dwellers with Nature, and ensure the survival of plant and animal populations. I envision a new kind of public landscape that balances the needs of human beings with those of the living world. My designs often combine restored ecologies with public access, and transform our traditional image of parks into ‘ecology gardens.” (in Oakes, p. 150)
“Instead of focusing on constraints, the designer of public art should take the opportunity to rethink elemental issues and relationships—archetypal needs and roles—to create designs that focus on meaning rather than style.” (Johanson, Art Journal, p. 338)
“My art projects became incorporated into daily life, and were interwoven with natural ecosystems. The hallmark of my work became to incorporate everything, and to harm nothing.” (in Oakes, p. 150)
“I never design until I have discovered the meaning of the place. Each place has a unique set of conditions, and we need an intimate understanding of what it has been, is now, and will become in the future, in order to create a design that is more than a willful act.” (in Kelley, p. 19)
“We need to recapture Frederick Law Olmsted
’s vision of American democracy and concretize it in a new series of public spaces that acknowledge the right of every living thing to have a place.’‘ (Art Journal, Winter, 1989, p. 338)
“The ordinary is very important to me—that art is not on a pedestal, not hermetically sealed away, that animals and plants are not living behind bars or maintained in a perfect temperature-controlled environment.” In (Kelley, p. 39)
“Ultimately it’s all equally important…the microscopic bacteria and the man who contributes a million dollars to the project.” (in Kelley, p. 40)
“What I’ve been trying to do is dissolve the hierarchies and get everything on the same level—the art, the people, the plants, the soil, the water.” (in Kelley, p. 40)
“I’m not interested in telling people what they should think. I try to create situations where people can understand, through their own experience, how the world works.” In (Kelley, p. 40)
“When you think about what music is, it really is overlapping patterns. And I realize that is very much what I try to accomplish with my projects—a symphony of different voices…Creating overlapping patterns within the same composition is an idea I use again and again in different ways. Because these patterns unfold in time, you may need to reach the end of the composition before you see how the beginning is connected. With accumulating knowledge, the patterns keep shifting, so you are putting it together in your mind as you go—very much as you experience music.” (in Kelley, pp. 45–46)
“Some of the aims of my work are to recreate ecological communities, support wildlife, and introduce urban dwellers to intricate webs of life within the context of art projects and public parks. While it is obvious that such tiny sites cannot ultimately affect the survival of populations, a major purpose of my work is to show how human activity can be incorporated into natural ecosystems. Many people are unaware that a diversity of life forms, including obscure invertebrates and microbes, is essential to creating soils, regulating climate, cleansing water, and maintaining planetary health.” (in Oakes, p. 157)
“I’d like to expunge my ego as an artist and just do work that is positive and life-supporting.” (in Kelley, p. 108)
Dallas Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C.
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York
Artist’s Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1975
International Women’s Year Award, 1976
Patricia Johanson Papers, 1964–1998, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siarchives&uri=full=3100001~!208921~!0#focus
Greenmuseum biography http://greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-98.html
Women Environmental Artists Directory: Biography http://www.weadartists.org/johanson/johanson.html
An Interview with Patricia Johanson http://patriciajohanson.com/ahninterview/
2003 AHN Award Winner: Patricia Johanson http://www.artheals.org/ahn_award/2003ahn_award.html
Chip McAuley, “Creating Places: Reflections on Patricia Johanson—the artist as savior,’‘ Metroactive http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/01.25.06/johanson-0604.html
David Templeton, “Art in the Marsh: Renowned nature artist has big plans for Petaluma,’‘ Metroactive http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/02.28.02/marsh-0209.html
Xin Wu, Patricia Johanson’s House & Garden Commission: Reconstruction of Modernity, vols. 1 & 2 (Dumbarton Oaks / Harvard University Press, 2007). http://sites.google.com/site/xinwuxin/publications/books
Patricia Johanson is known for her large-scale art projects that create aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife. She designs her functional art projects, created with and in the natural landscape
Natural landscape
A natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural...
, to solve infrastructure and environmental problems, but also to reconnect city-dwellers with nature and with the history of a place. These project designs date from 1969, making her a pioneer in the field of ecological-art (or eco-art.) Johanson’s work has also been classified as Land Art
Land art
Land art, Earthworks , or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked...
, Environmental Art
Environmental art
The term environmental art is used in two different contexts: it can be used generally to refer to art dealing with ecological issues and/or the natural, such as the formal, the political, the historical, or the social context....
, Site-specific Art and Garden Art. Her early paintings and sculptures are part of Minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
.
Early life & education
Johanson’s enthusiasm for nature and for art began in childhood. She grew up in New York City, where she spent countless hours in Frederick Law OlmstedFrederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
parks. Her mother, a former model, introduced her to the arts. As a high school student, she excelled at music, but at Bennington College
Bennington College
Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...
(1958–1962) she was a painting major.
Through her contacts at Bennington, Johanson became part of the 1960s New-York art-world. Her Bennington instructor, Tony Smith (sculptor)
Tony Smith (sculptor)
Tony Smith was an American sculptor, visual artist, architectural designer, and a noted theorist on art. He is often cited as a pioneering figure in American Minimalist sculpture.-Education:...
, was a close friend and her art-history professor, Eugene Goossen, a mentor and later her husband. At this time she met fellow-artists Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
, David Smith (sculptor)
David Smith (sculptor)
David Roland Smith was an American Abstract Expressionist sculptor and painter, best known for creating large steel abstract geometric sculptures.-Biography:...
, Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
, Franz Kline
Franz Kline
Franz Jozef Kline was an American painter mainly associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys...
, Philip Guston
Philip Guston
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
and Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell
Joseph Cornell was an American artist and sculptor, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage...
. She also came to know art-critic Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg was an American essayist known mainly as an influential visual art critic closely associated with American Modern art of the mid-20th century...
and visionary architect Frederick John Kiesler
Frederick John Kiesler
Frederick John Kiesler...
.
Johanson earned a Master’s in art history at Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
, New York in 1964. There she studied with Tony Smith, Eugene Goossen and Ad Reinhardt
Ad Reinhardt
Adolph Frederick Reinhardt was an Abstract painter active in New York beginning in the 1930s and continuing through the 1960s. He was a member of the American Abstract Artists and was a part of the movement centered around the Betty Parsons Gallery that became known as Abstract Expressionism...
and met fellow art students Robert Morris
Robert Morris (artist)
Robert Morris is an American sculptor, conceptual artist and writer. He is regarded as one of the most prominent theorists of Minimalism along with Donald Judd but he has also made important contributions to the development of performance art, land art, the Process Art movement and installation...
, Carl Andre
Carl Andre
Carl Andre is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks to more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor of an exhibition space Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American...
and Robert Barry
Robert Barry (artist)
Robert Barry is an American artist. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installations, and performance art using a variety of otherwise invisible media...
. At this time, she worked as a researcher for New York publisher Benjamin Blom on a compendium of 18th and 19th century American artists. The project led to an opportunity to catalogue the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, who became an important mentor.
Her husband, art critic and historian Eugene Goossen
Eugene Goossen
Eugene C. Goossen was an American art critic and art historian who organized more than 60 art exhibitions, wrote essays for catalogues in addition to books on the subject. He was on the faculty of Hunter College, where he headed the art department.Goossen was born in 1921 in Gloversville, New York...
, died in 1997.
Minimalist Art Works
Johanson’s paintings and sculptures of the 1960s have been classified as MinimalismMinimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
and they were included in some of the earliest shows of Minimal Art: “8 Young Artists” (1964), “Distillation” (1966) and “Cool Art” (1968). Her Minimalist paintings used simple lines to explore the optical effects of color. These were shown at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery
Tibor de Nagy Gallery
The Tibor de Nagy Gallery is an art gallery in New York City, USA. It was involved in the discovery of many of the Second Generation Abstract Expressionist Movement’s most important artists and also representational artists of the era including Grace Hartigan, Alfred Leslie, Helen Frankenthaler,...
in New York in the 1960s and her 28 feet (8.5 m) oil painting, William Clark, was included in the1968 Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
contemporary art survey, “The Art of the Real”
Johanson began making large-scale, Minimal sculpture in 1966 with William Rush, consisting of 200 feet (61 m) of painted steel tee-beams laid flat in a clearing. In 1968 she increased her scale to 1600 feet (487.7 m) with Stephen Long (inspired by the 19th century topographical and railway engineer
Stephen Harriman Long
Stephen Harriman Long was a U.S. army explorer, topographical engineer, and railway engineer. As an inventor, he is noted for his developments in the design of steam locomotives. He was also one of the most prolific explorers of the early 1800s, although his career as an explorer was relatively...
), where 2 foot (0.6096 m), painted plywood segments were installed along an abandoned railroad track in Buskirk, New York. This was followed by other large-scale Minimalist sculptures sited outdoors. Johanson’s Minimalst sculptures introduced the idea of artworks that cannot be experienced all at once, still an important value in her work.
Cyrus Field (1970–71), while still a large Minimalist sculpture, marks a transition. Using marble, cement and redwood slabs in their natural state, she created a maze of lines that lead visitors through a forest to reveal the changing, natural landscape
Natural landscape
A natural landscape is a landscape that is unaffected by human activity. A natural landscape is intact when all living and nonliving elements are free to move and change. The nonliving elements distinguish a natural landscape from a wilderness. A wilderness includes areas within which natural...
. With this piece she began thinking of line as a compositional device to incorporate, rather than displace, nature. She also invented a way to mediate between human scale and the vastness of nature.
The House and Garden Commission (1969)
In 1969, House & Garden (magazine) invited Johanson to design a garden. While this was never built, the commission prompted an outpouring of visionary ideas—150 small sketches—which she has continued to draw upon over the years. The drawings, accompanied by essays and explanatory notes, were a departure from traditional garden designs and also a rejection of the formalist orientation of the1960s art world. Instead of art-for-art’s sake, her garden designs embodied meaningfulness and functionality.Johanson’s move from making objects to working with the natural world—at first in drawings and later in actual commissions—has parallels (as well as differences) with the emergence of Earthworks by artists in her circle of friends, such as Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson
Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....
and Nancy Holt
Nancy Holt
Nancy Holt is an American artist famous for her public sculpture, installation art and land art. Throughout her career, Holt has also produced works in other mediums, including film, photography, and writing artist’s books.-Biography:...
. The similarity is working large-scale with the land itself. A difference is that many of Johanson’s designs were meant to serve practical functions, such as flood control, habitat for local wildlife, and green roofs that absorb rainwater. Johanson also designed for urban, rather than remote locations. Another difference is that most of her designs are dominated by a simple, large image of a plant or animal.
The House and Garden designs mark a reorientation in Johanson’s career. She gave up painting and sculpture and now focused on designs that are simultaneously art and landscape To prepare herself for translating project designs into large-scale sculptural landscapes, she began studying civil engineering and architecture at City College School of Architecture, New York, in 1971, receiving her B. Arch. in 1977.
Plant Drawings for Projects: 1974-78
In the 1970s, Johanson began a family and settled in upstate New York, where she has lived ever since. She left the vibrant New York art scene for a 19th-century farmhouse on the rural Buskirk property of Eugene Goossen. Her first son, Alvar, was born in 1973 (followed by Gerrit in 1978 and Nathaniel in 1980). Here she was in constant touch with the natural seasons, but childrearing left only snatches of time to work.Her solution was to make tiny drawings of plants during the day and at night to transform them into designs for large-scale projects. At this time, she also studied botany texts. This was a new process: instead of depending on inspiration, she rendered nature in a straightforward way.
Water and Color Garden Designs: 1980-85
In the 1980s, even as Johanson began her first built projects, she created several series of project drawings for gardens and fountains that emphasize water and color in the form of gigantic flowers, butterfly wings or snakes. For example, Tidal Color Gardens (1981–82) increase the visibility of tides, with images of butterfly wings or flowers changing as water flows in and out. The O’Keeffe/Equivalents-Color Garden are drawings for earth sculptures in the form of a butterfly wing with color patterns based on Alfred StieglitzAlfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
photographs of O’Keeffe.
Leonhardt Lagoon, Dallas (1981-1986)
Johanson’s first built project was commissioned in 1981 to restore Fair ParkFair Park
Dallas Fair Park is a recreational and educational complex located in Dallas, Texas . The complex is registered as a Dallas Landmark, National Historic Landmark and is home to nine museums, six performance facilities, a lagoon, and the largest Ferris wheel in North America...
's Leonhardt Lagoon, which was then in a badly degraded state. To solve the problems of an eroded shoreline, murky water and algal bloom
Algal bloom
An algal bloom is a rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae in an aquatic system. Algal blooms may occur in freshwater as well as marine environments. Typically, only one or a small number of phytoplankton species are involved, and some blooms may be recognized by discoloration...
, Johanson devised large sculptural forms that broke up wave action and selected indigenous plantings as microhabitats for wildlife. The gigantic, terra cotta-colored gunite sculptures, which doubled as pathways for human visitors and perches for birds and turtles, take the form of a Delta Duck-potato (Sagittaria
Sagittaria
Sagittaria is a genus of about 30 species of aquatic plants whose members go by a variety of common names, including arrowhead, duck potato, iz-ze-kn, katniss, kuwai , swan potato, tule potato, and wapato...
platyphylla) and a Spider Brake Fern (Pteris multifida). Today Leonhardt Lagoon is a functioning ecosystem in the heart of Dallas, where it also serves as a place of education and recreation. This is one of the earliest examples of art as bioremediation
Bioremediation
Bioremediation is the use of microorganism metabolism to remove pollutants. Technologies can be generally classified as in situ or ex situ. In situ bioremediation involves treating the contaminated material at the site, while ex situ involves the removal of the contaminated material to be treated...
. For this and other large-scale urban projects, she works with a variety of experts, including scientists, engineers, and city planners, as well as local citizen groups.
Endangered Garden, San Francisco (1987-97)
When San Francisco needed a new pump station and holding tank next to the Bay, Johanson was invited to co-design a facility that would be sensitive to the site. She wanted something aesthetic, but also useful in ways beyond mere sewage treatment, so she designed a series of habitats to nourish threatened species. The roof of the sewer is a one-third-mile-long baywalk whose colors and patterns derive from the endangered San Francisco garter snakeSan Francisco garter snake
The San Francisco Garter Snake is a slender multi-colored colubrid snake. Designated as an endangered species since the year 1967, it is endemic to California and resides only in San Mateo County, California, and the extreme northern part of coastal Santa Cruz County, California...
. The head of the serpent is a 20 feet (6.1 m) mound that serves as a microhabitat for butterflies. The Ribbon Worm Tidal Steps fills with water at high tide, creating homes for small marine life.
Park for the Amazon Rainforest, Obidos, Brazil (1992)
In 1992, the Brazilian government invited Johanson to attend the Earth SummitEarth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development , also known as the Rio Summit, Rio Conference, Earth Summit was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 June to 14 June 1992.-Overview:...
and to create a project for a park in the Amazon Rainforest
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
. Her model for this shows a 150 feet (45.7 m) ramp, in the form of a Brazilian aerial plant, that allows visitors to experience a range of microhabitats at various levels. The ramp itself is intended to become encrusted by tropical vegetation. This project has been disrupted several times by changes in government and is currently on hold.
The Rocky Marciano Trail, Brockton, Massachusetts (1997-1999)
This project, which art critic Lucy Lippard calls a favorite, began as an effort to stimulate Brockton’sBrockton, Massachusetts
Brockton is a city in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States; the population was 93,810 in the 2010 Census. Brockton, along with Plymouth, are the county seats of Plymouth County...
economy. Johanson developed a master plan to connect disparate neighborhoods and districts and to restore ecological functioning. Since Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano
Rocky Marciano , born Rocco Francis Marchegiano, was an American boxer and the heavyweight champion of the world from September 23, 1952, to April 27, 1956. Marciano is the only champion to hold the heavyweight title and go undefeated throughout his career. Marciano defended his title six times...
is a Brockton celebrity, she planned to use his training routes as a way to connect neighborhoods and nature. The Rocky Marciano Trail begins at the Marciano home and leads visitors to various “magnet sites,’‘ such as Thomas McNulty Park and Battery Wagner, both enhanced by Johanson’s cultural and environmental designs. She also planned to daylight the many buried or disrupted streams throughout the town and to revive forest corridors to create a continuous public landscape. This project was rejected by the city of Brockton.
Millenium Park Landfill Site, Seoul, Korea (1999)
In 1999, Johanson was part of an international team of experts asked to propose sustainable solutions for SeoulSeoul
Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...
’s main dumpsite, which closed in 1990. To reclaim the site her idea was to transform it into a park and to restore ecological communities. As a unifying image, she chose the haetae
Haetae
Xiezhi or Haetae is a legendary creature in both Korean and Chinese myths. According to Korean and Chinese records, an animal with a horn in the center of its head lived in the frontier areas of Manchuria....
, a mythical animal that wards off evil. She borrowed decorative patterns of haetae sculptures to create designs for terraces, microhabitats, and pedestrian and vehicle access to the summits.
Petaluma Wetlands Park and Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility, Petaluma, California (2001-09)
Working as a member of the Carollo EngineersCarollo engineers
Carollo Engineers is an environmental engineering firm specializingin the planning, design, and construction management of water and wastewater...
design team, Johanson helped create a new water treatment facility. By overlaying art, public access, sewage treatment, habitat restorations, and agriculture, she embedded major urban infrastructure within living nature. Her design has been credited with "re-inventing art and reforming civil engineering". The project includes natural systems to treat sewage, allowing millions of gallons of water to be reused. Johanson used the form of the endangered Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse
Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse
The Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse , also known as the Red-bellied Harvest Mouse and some times called by Saltmarsh Harvest Mouse, is an endangered rodent endemic to the San Francisco Bay Area salt marshes in California. There are two distinct subspecies, both endangered and listed together on federal...
to create the shapes of the polishing ponds, which contain islands that direct the flow of water and provide nesting habitat for birds. Other plantings support local wildlife. An additional 230 acre (0.9307778 km²) area of tidal wetlands was acquired for the park and wildlife sanctuary. This multi-purpose landscape provides more than 3 miles (4.8 km) of walking trails for educational programs, nature study and tourism. Petaluma Wetlands Park coincides with a $150 million dollar sewage treatment facility, while also serving as a highly visible model for converting sewage into recycled water, which is stored in a deep reservoir at the end of the "mouse's tail".
The Draw at Sugar House, Salt Lake City, Utah (2003-present)
The Salt Lake nonprofit, Parley’s Rails, Trails and Tunnels Coalition commissioned Johanson to create safe passage under a major expressway to connect two sections of the planned eight-mile (13 km) Parley’s Trail. Two gigantic sculptures based on the native Sego Lily (Calochortus nuttalliiCalochortus nuttallii
The Sego Lily, Calochortus nuttallii, is a bulbous perennial which is endemic to the Western United States. It is the state flower of Utah.-Description:...
) and rattlesnake are planned to structure the areas to east and west of 1300 East. They serve practical, infrastructure functions, with plantings to support local wildlife. The lily is simultaneously art, overlook, trail and plaza, while the snake design serves as retaining walls, waterfalls, paths and ponds. The underpass will mimic a Utah canyon, with embedded coal seams and fossil formations. The design is multilayered, with references to local ecology, geology and history, offering visitors opportunities to connect in a variety of ways.
What Others Have Said About Patricia Johanson
“Of all the artists (so many of them women) who have become known over the last few decades for large-scale public art in/with nature—what is now called ‘eco-art,’ Johanson stands out as a seldom-acknowledged pioneer. Her writings of the late 1960s, when she was still in her twenties, are a cornucopia of possibilities for environmental art and planning that are still being ‘discovered’ today.”“Johanson’s working model is the ecosystem and survival is her core theme, one she knows all too well, personally and politically”.
“Patricia Johanson was one of the first artists to think of art as a means to restore habitats and her work is an outstanding model for maintaining biodiversity. By creating art that revitalizes natural ecosystems and introduces them to urban dwellers, she has become an innovator in art, ecology, and urban renewal.”
“Johanson teaches that artists can be vital, visionary forces in creating social and environmental change.”
Patricia Johanson Quotations
“Since the most critical issue in the years ahead is the preservation of life on earth, design should be approached for its ability to be life-supporting, rather than as an expression of the artist’s ‘‘angst”, the pursuit of ideal relationships, a pilfering of art-historical styles, or a quest for the new. Novelty, controversy, and the production of high-style consumer goods have become mainstays of modern art. Artists should have the courage to move away from work oriented to money and power and use their creativity to help solve critical problems in the ‘real’ world.” (Art Journal, Winter, 1989, p. 338)“A major theme in my work from the beginning has been to reconnect city dwellers with Nature, and ensure the survival of plant and animal populations. I envision a new kind of public landscape that balances the needs of human beings with those of the living world. My designs often combine restored ecologies with public access, and transform our traditional image of parks into ‘ecology gardens.” (in Oakes, p. 150)
“Instead of focusing on constraints, the designer of public art should take the opportunity to rethink elemental issues and relationships—archetypal needs and roles—to create designs that focus on meaning rather than style.” (Johanson, Art Journal, p. 338)
“My art projects became incorporated into daily life, and were interwoven with natural ecosystems. The hallmark of my work became to incorporate everything, and to harm nothing.” (in Oakes, p. 150)
“I never design until I have discovered the meaning of the place. Each place has a unique set of conditions, and we need an intimate understanding of what it has been, is now, and will become in the future, in order to create a design that is more than a willful act.” (in Kelley, p. 19)
“We need to recapture Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted was an American journalist, social critic, public administrator, and landscape designer. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture, although many scholars have bestowed that title upon Andrew Jackson Downing...
’s vision of American democracy and concretize it in a new series of public spaces that acknowledge the right of every living thing to have a place.’‘ (Art Journal, Winter, 1989, p. 338)
“The ordinary is very important to me—that art is not on a pedestal, not hermetically sealed away, that animals and plants are not living behind bars or maintained in a perfect temperature-controlled environment.” In (Kelley, p. 39)
“Ultimately it’s all equally important…the microscopic bacteria and the man who contributes a million dollars to the project.” (in Kelley, p. 40)
“What I’ve been trying to do is dissolve the hierarchies and get everything on the same level—the art, the people, the plants, the soil, the water.” (in Kelley, p. 40)
“I’m not interested in telling people what they should think. I try to create situations where people can understand, through their own experience, how the world works.” In (Kelley, p. 40)
“When you think about what music is, it really is overlapping patterns. And I realize that is very much what I try to accomplish with my projects—a symphony of different voices…Creating overlapping patterns within the same composition is an idea I use again and again in different ways. Because these patterns unfold in time, you may need to reach the end of the composition before you see how the beginning is connected. With accumulating knowledge, the patterns keep shifting, so you are putting it together in your mind as you go—very much as you experience music.” (in Kelley, pp. 45–46)
“Some of the aims of my work are to recreate ecological communities, support wildlife, and introduce urban dwellers to intricate webs of life within the context of art projects and public parks. While it is obvious that such tiny sites cannot ultimately affect the survival of populations, a major purpose of my work is to show how human activity can be incorporated into natural ecosystems. Many people are unaware that a diversity of life forms, including obscure invertebrates and microbes, is essential to creating soils, regulating climate, cleansing water, and maintaining planetary health.” (in Oakes, p. 157)
“I’d like to expunge my ego as an artist and just do work that is positive and life-supporting.” (in Kelley, p. 108)
Public Collections with Works by Patricia Johanson
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OhioDallas Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C.
Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York
Awards
Guggenheim Fellowships, 1970 http://www.gf.org/fellows/7316-patricia-johansonArtist’s Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1975
International Women’s Year Award, 1976
External links
Patricia Johanson’s official website http://www.patriciajohanson.com/Patricia Johanson Papers, 1964–1998, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=all&source=~!siarchives&uri=full=3100001~!208921~!0#focus
Greenmuseum biography http://greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-98.html
Women Environmental Artists Directory: Biography http://www.weadartists.org/johanson/johanson.html
An Interview with Patricia Johanson http://patriciajohanson.com/ahninterview/
2003 AHN Award Winner: Patricia Johanson http://www.artheals.org/ahn_award/2003ahn_award.html
Chip McAuley, “Creating Places: Reflections on Patricia Johanson—the artist as savior,’‘ Metroactive http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/01.25.06/johanson-0604.html
David Templeton, “Art in the Marsh: Renowned nature artist has big plans for Petaluma,’‘ Metroactive http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/02.28.02/marsh-0209.html
Xin Wu, Patricia Johanson’s House & Garden Commission: Reconstruction of Modernity, vols. 1 & 2 (Dumbarton Oaks / Harvard University Press, 2007). http://sites.google.com/site/xinwuxin/publications/books