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K. Johnson Bowles has exhibited in more than 80 solo and group exhibitions nationally. Feature articles, essays, and reviews of her work have appeared in more than 30 publications including Sculpture, SPOT, and Surface Design Journal. She is the recipient of fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, Houston Center for Photography, the Visual Studies Workshop, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Since 2020, more than 100 works from her most recent body of work, Veronica’s Cloths, have been selected for publication in 49 art and literary journals across the US including the American Journal of Poetry, the William and Mary Review, decomp journal, and The Journal among others. In addition, she has written critical essays about art and has curated more than 125 exhibitions of Chinese, African, and American art. She received her MFA in photography and painting from Ohio University and BFA in painting from Boston University.
The Interview
At what point in your life did you know that you wanted to become an artist? Did the realization emerge slowly?
I can’t recall a moment that I didn’t want to be an artist, but I don’t think it was a conscious decision necessarily – it was just a state of being, a foregone conclusion. Drawing, arranging things, and creating objects were like breathing in my youth.
The difficulty of becoming an artist after undergraduate and graduate school was being an artist while doing other things. Earning a living, having a career in academia, being married, raising a daughter, getting a divorce, having cancer, being a senior administrator can be all-consuming events over a lifetime. Because of these things, life as an artist ebbed and flowed over time – always there, sometimes simmering and sometimes boiling over. There have been some highly productive artistic periods throughout my life, such as my 20s and 30s, and late 40s. Now, in my mid-50s, I’m probably the most productive I’ve been since my 20s.
How did you evolve your style and favorite mediums?
I had little knowledge about the continuum of materials and approaches to art making growing up, my choice for an undergraduate program was very traditional. I thought I needed to be in a city, so I chose Boston University. As a painting major, all my professors were elderly men who wore white lab coats in class. They were highly conservative in their beliefs. For example, they told the women students to marry doctors. They believed in a hierarchy of art disciplines and a set regime of subject matter (portrait, landscape, still life). Painting or sculpture was the only suitable form for a real artist. Drawing was a tool. Printmaking was lesser or secondary form. Photography, graphic design, and ceramics were eschewed altogether. In retrospect, I lament I didn’t know about fiber art or programs with more experimental approaches.
After graduate school, where I earned a dual MFA in photography and painting, I only created one body of work using painting and drawing. It was called The Personal Maintenance Series, self-portraits looking into a mirror as I did various actions such as popping a pimple, cutting out nose hair, bleaching facial hair, et al. It garnered success, and I was awarded exhibitions and grants. But after that, I abandoned painting altogether. Then, I was also without a darkroom (digital was not even a possibility at that moment in time). I gravitated toward more alternative forms of photography and integrating other materials into my work.
The first body of work using mixed media was called Post Catholic Relics, where I critique the church’s views of women and sexual identity. I created contemporary reliquaries by enshrining menstrual-blood-stained underwear, hair, and a used pee-stick (positive) from an early pregnancy test, and the like. When the work was exhibited, I was investigated for violating public decency, protested, written about in letters to the editor, and threatened with violence. For the last thirty years, I’ve continued to explore themes of identity, sexual/gender politics, and social justice via mixed media assemblages. The assemblages (and sometimes installations) have utilized fabric and photography in concert.
What are your time management techniques? Do you have regular working hours...or favorite times to work?
Monday thru Friday, I work in the mornings and evenings on my art. I’m also the executive director of a natural history, science, and art museum, which I love and devote most of my day to advancing its mission. So, I have to be strategic about my time for my artwork. Every week, I make a list of things I want to accomplish.
In the early mornings and late evenings, I often work on organizational, planning, and management tasks related to my artworks. I use the time to generate images, compose pieces, gather or order supplies, prepare pieces for sewing, or write. It’s also essential for me to keep track of the work. I use spreadsheets to record titles, dates, status, photography, framing, sales, and when and where pieces are published and exhibited.
On weekends I get up early and work all day on my art when I can — mostly sewing together completed compositions. My home and studio are the same. So, I take breaks to get home tasks accomplished. Breakthroughs in my work have mostly occurred when I can spend a week or more focused on just the artwork, either by taking a vacation or attending a residency.
Do you work on more than one piece at a time, or primarily just on one?
I work in clusters of about six to eight pieces at a time; it just makes more sense to me for two reasons. One reason is about practicality, and the other reason is about how I develop content and compositions.
First, it is easier to print out a batch of images, select the handkerchiefs, wash and iron them, heat transfer several photos, and then sew on the backing simultaneously. I see this stage as priming many canvases; I’m getting the mechanics of working accomplished efficiently. I also enjoy the meditative repetition of the process.
Second, the works are developed over time. I play with various materials and compositions in a mode of free association until content and form are realized. In some pieces, the design, themes, and choices of materials come to me quickly. For other pieces, I might struggle or get stuck. When a piece isn’t working, or I can’t move forward, I say to myself, ‘fuck it,’ set those pieces aside, clear my head, and come back to it after working on another piece. Usually, I can resolve the piece by the time I get to the end of the batch. If not, I put it away and look at it now and again to see if an idea emerges for it.
What would you say is your biggest influence--that which keeps you working, regardless of all else, your most steadfast motivation?
Exploring life’s complexities and contradictions, I constantly ruminate on ludicrous things and seek to expose them. When something is unjust, I act. Art is a means of speaking out, pointing out the illogical. This is especially true when I experience or witness actions that are discriminatory. That predilection, along with my sense of humor – droll, wry, dark, off-beat – keeps me working. Humor via visual puns and using ‘ugly’ and ‘tacky’ materials cut through the pretension. Not only do I employ these techniques, but I also seek out the same aesthetic in everyday life.
In particular, I love vernacular art (the more excessive, compulsive, over-the-top, the better) and surround myself with it in my home. When I write about art or curate exhibitions, I gravitate to that kind of work. The aesthetics of ‘so bad it’s good’ and ‘so wrong it’s right’ greatly appeal to me. I’m inspired by self-taught artists’ tenacity and confidence. Often, vernacular art exudes a confrontational honesty that can be so unexpected as to be uncomfortable. Some people turn away from looking at that type of work, but I can’t stop looking and thinking about it.
Does trying something new and not knowing the rules -- the boundary pushing -- create anxiety or excitement in you? (Or both?)
I don’t consciously think about boundary-pushing. Focusing on living by my own rules rather than societal conventions seems apt to describe my process. When I’m honestly expressing my views and aesthetics, it creates a feeling of enjoyment and amusement, or a flow state described by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I have energized focus and lose track of time.
For me, making art is an exercise in discovery and exposure. I love the ‘aha’ moment when I’ve taken some nonsensical societal construct or stereotype of who and what I should be and expose it in a funny way. I take what is absurd in life and reveal its’s absurdity in absurd ways. The materials, words, sounds, signs, symbols, fast-paced interplay produce sarcastic in-jokes, satire, and spoofs. I think of what I’m doing more akin to screwball comedies that first emerged in the 1930s. My Man Godfrey, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Bring Up Baby, How to Marry a Millionaire, Some Like It Hot, Pillow Talk, What’s Up Doc are some of my favorites. Those films combined physical humor and witty repartee to devolve into serious gender, identity, and class issues with a stubborn woman as the protagonist. I guess you’d call me the protagonist (an art trickster) making screwball art.
Do you enjoy having the "duality of both chaos and control" or are you happiest with a set plan?
I like the idea of creating order from chaos. However, I’m not a black and white, linear thinker; I’m a tangential thinker constantly looking for systems, patterns, and connections between things. Many ideas, facts, and images simultaneously swirl around my head; I enjoy organizing them into something meaningful. It’s how I make sense of the world and remain optimistic. I live my life that way – my home is filled with unique items tidily organized into what one friend calls ‘an aggressive interior,’ as a museum director, I love creating systems for knowing and understanding information (especially databases and spreadsheets), as an artist I have a repository of materials (categorized and labeled in bins) I pick and choose from to make my assemblages. My plan follows organizing and editing chaos when I make art.
Do you have any projects or events forthcoming?
This fall works from the series Veronica’s Cloths will be published in several literary journals and featured in exhibitions. A couple of articles are coming out about the series as well. Next, I’m scheduling time to attend a residency, perhaps late this year or next year, depending on what can be worked out with the site. I also write about art and have a couple of projects I’m working on – a book based upon an essay I wrote published by Afterimage (UCPress) this year called “The Color of Trauma.” Then I’m working on an article about the aesthetics of spontaneous memorials, which will come out in March of 2022.
Burden of Proof,
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
Cock/Block/Bow/Blow/Woe,
2021,
mixed media assemblage,
18 x 18 x 3 inches
2021,
mixed media assemblage,
18 x 18 x 3 inches
Crown and Glory,
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
Gossip and Lies,
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
Sounds from the Back of My Head,
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
Trying to Catch My Breath,
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches
2020,
mixed media assemblage,
16 x 16 x 3 inches