Since Feb. 7, AU students and the community alike have had access to a number of artworks created by Willard Johnson, a graduate of Anderson University, as part of the PACT program (Peace and Conflict Transformation). Johnson, who was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1987, completed his BA in Studio Arts with a Concentration in Painting in 2010 and went on to receive his Master’s in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work has since been exhibited in places such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indianapolis International Airport, the Harrison Gallery, and, most recently, the Wilson Gallery here on campus.
Students are most likely to first notice his collection titled, “Night Train,” a series of paintings spanning the walls outside the gallery itself from the dance office to the media lab. These paintings might draw a viewer’s eye from either the use of vibrant colors splashed across the canvas, or from the lack thereof. One piece, “We Went Back,” depicts two silhouettes in green and seafoam blue against a dark purple background, all with jagged words in the same purple, white, and bright pink scrawled over them. While another, titled “Black Sun,” is done entirely in blacks and grays. It highlights a lone, blurry figure beneath an umbrella in a vague yet foreboding atmosphere. Both paintings heavily make use of color to portray the atmosphere, exciting yet frenzied, melancholy and introspective.
Inside the Wilson Gallery itself is the collection, “Nomads of Memory.” Hanging from strings that stretch all around the perimeter of the gallery are various collages that employ newspaper clippings, portraits, photos, and anything else necessary for a specific artwork’s purpose. The pieces themselves, as Johnson’s website states, serve as “a surreal and poignant invitation to perceive our shared reality through a prism of juxtaposed memories, anticipations, and experiences.”
In an interview with Anderson University, “Willard Johnson Gallery Exhibition,” Johnson reveals that one such experience he drew on when creating his work was his “upbringing as the child of missionaries.” This is especially clear in the collage that portrays different interpretations of one porthole window with a plane stretching across the middle of the canvas. Though the size of the plane window never changes, each square shows a view with differently arranged clouds to represent the feeling a young child accustomed to travelling to new places would have, and the sense of the world flying by. Every work of Johnson’s has something to say, either about his world growing up, the world as he sees it now, or even about how a casual viewer interprets the ideas presented to them.
The Wilson Gallery will continue to exhibit Johnson’s artwork until March 7 in collaboration with PACT. It is open at any time to students and can be found on the second floor of York, just between the Black Bird Media Lab and the Dance office. Take a look!