Dwellers

About the Work

From the Artist

This piece is about a trip to the Chaco Canyon as a visiting artist in Arizona. I was fascinated by anything that was creating the shapes and forms and just the whole experience was very good…I was fascinated, from the planes, how everything, when I came to Philadelphia, the cities were my canyons. I found that I really could imagine all sorts of spaces and places to move in and out.
—Excerpted from Lois M. Johnson Interview: https://vimeo.com/16395583, accessed 6-24-2021

I print directly in generally emotive, only slightly pre-planned sequence with the artistic expectation of directly evolving the proof to wherever it needs to go. Many colors and stages later, a finished limited edition emerges. Artmaking has paralleled my classroom teaching and administrating at the University of the Arts [Philadelphia], while each path has enhanced the other…Often, I just start, and just keep building it until I feel comfortable with it.
_{—Excerpted from Lois M. Johnson Interview: https://vimeo.com/16395583, accessed 6-24-2021}

Artwork should be judged on what it presents to the individual viewer. How it is done, or by whom, is of secondary importance...I maintain the message offered by a particular piece of art depends entirely upon the viewer. If the work is too predictable, that’s not good.
—Excerpted from Grand Forks Herald, ND, 1974

Lois M. Johnson's prints investigate issues of line, color, form, and space. Plateau and Dwellers, both offset lithographs from 1992, are abstractions that juxtapose rural and urban landscapes—a skyscraper against a mountain. Johnson is fascinated by architectural space, as well as natural and man-made elements. The artist employs bold, rich color to structure and define edges in a series of geometric shapes. Her prints are made up of photo fragments and layered images. She arrived at the Workshop with several drawings on mylar as a starting point, having mastered offset lithography. She had no idea how the finished print would look and made changes as the image progressed based on what she saw on the press. She was in control of her image and enjoyed discovering new insights about texture, color, and form while using an open-ended approach to printmaking.
_{—Adapted from "Fresh, Human and Personal: Signature of Brandywine Workshop," Three Decades of American Printmaking: The Brandywine Workshop Collection (Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2004)}