Nationally recognized landscape and eco-artist Patricia Johanson is working with UWMC art students during her November 14- 18, 2011 residency. Her public presentation on November 17 in the CCE Theatre will include a retrospective of her collective international work designing and implementing large-scale art that creates aesthetic and practical habitats for humans and wildlife, solves infrastructure and environmental problems, and reconnects city-dwellers with nature and with the history of a place. Her slide show and talk will also focus on student work generated by her residency in the UWMC Art Department, in collaboration with the Monk Botanical Gardens.

In September, Professor Diana Budde's drawing students toured Monk Gardens with Paul Whitaker, UWMC biology professor who also serves on the botanical garden's board of directors. Professor Whitaker informed the art students of the garden's need for a children's play/tree house in the pine wood area, a bridge over the narrow area of the pond, and a memorial sculpture to Robert W. Monk in the clearing. Monk bequeathed the 20 acres to be used as a public educational botanical preserve/garden and urban oasis. The drawing students will generate designs for either the tree house, the bridge or the memorial. Ms. Johanson will critique these designs and give insights based on her experience of cleaning up and revitalizing the lagoon adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in her Fairpark Lagoon work completed in 1981. Suggestions will be noted by the students and the designs will be turned over to the Monk Gardens Board of Directors for consideration. UWMC Introduction to Painting students also toured Monk Gardens and shot digital images of the site, both on a small scale (berries on a branch) and a large scale (the view of the gazebo across the pond, for instance). These students will paint an image, using the digital images as sources, that attempts to convey the experience of the terrain. Ms. Johanson will offer insights as she reviews these works. Oil painting students will design a tree house for Ms. Johanson's review. Works will be displayed in the Ahrnsbrak room in the student drawing and painting show in December, and will be discussed with the audience for the public event.

View the presentation video. (You will need a video play such as Windows Media Player, etc.)

More about Patricia Johanson...

"Art can help to heal the earth," says Patricia Johanson, whose large-scale projects  that serve as  infrastructures for modern cities embrace a radical, yet utterly practical vision. Johanson’s work with engineers, city planners, scientists and citizens' groups reclaims degraded ecologies for functional  purposes, from sewers to parks, and also speaks to the  the deep human needs for beauty, culture, and historical memory. In the process, she also answers to the needs of birds, insects, fish, and animals, and permits endangered species to thrive in the middle of major population centers. Johanson has designed and expanded site-works for congested waterfronts, endangered forests and urban wastelands. Each of her visionary ground plans is a saving grace for our earth-damaging culture.

From her origins as a minimalist painter and sculptor, to her current status as a pioneer in the world of ecological art, Johanson “reconciles delicacy with strength, generosity with power, and creativity with consequence."

A graduate of Bennington College, Johanson became part of the 1960s New-York art-world. She earned a Master’s in art history at Hunter College, where she catalogued the work of Georgia O’Keeffe, who became a mentor. Her early explorations into Minimalist work led to her transitionary phase, best represented by the work Cyrus Field, which employed marble, cement and redwood slabs in their natural state to create a forest maze that revealed a changing natural landscape, and, in the process, mediated between human scale and the vastness of nature.
Commissioned by House & Garden magazine in 1969 to design a garden, Johanson exploded onto the large-scale scene. She began studying civil engineering and architecture at City College School of Architecture, New York and received her Bachelor’s of Architecture. in 1977.

In the ensuing decades, Johanson has undertaken numerous city infrastructure environmental art projects, including: the restoration of Fair Park’s Leonhardt Lagoon in Dallas; the San Francisco pumping station baywalk habitat for threatened species; the Millenium Park Landfill Site in Seoul, Korea; an underpass expressway that mimics a Utah canyon in Salt Lake City; and the Petaluma Wetlands Park and Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility in California, among others.

Says Barbara Matilsky, “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.”
And Caffyn Kelley, author of a recent retrospective of her work, adds: “Johanson teaches that artists can be vital, visionary forces in creating social and environmental change.”

For more information, visit her website at:
http://patriciajohanson.com/