Still At It
Indira Johnson (81)
Recipient of the Illinois Governor’s Award for the Arts; Chicago Magazine’s 2013 Chicagoan of the Year
As an artist, my identity has evolved as part sculptor, cultural worker, peace activist and educator. For me art and life are interwoven so that creating objects in the studio goes hand in hand with site-specific installation and interactive/community-engaged projects. My public art projects reflect my passion and commitment to make art part of everyday life, involve local voices and communities in the art process and cultivate peace as individual action.
Much of my studio work centers around the use of objects discarded by society, combining them with my sculptural work to create new objects that explore the constant process of transformation and change in the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. These new forms still retain vestiges of their original identity yet contain different qualities, figurative, conceptual, experiential. My fascination for these abandoned objects has grown over the years leading me to question the issues of permanence and decay, strength and vulnerability.
