About Center Museum California Center for the Arts, Escondido

Discovery

Artist: Johnny Coleman (b. 1958)

“My work is centered upon themes of the crossroads: a focal point/threshold of challenge and transformation. For the last thirty years I have been composing spaces activated as prayers: requests for guidance, conscious statements of intent, and thanksgiving. For me, to speak from one's own experience is to empower one's self-creation. Memory, observation, and imagination are resources that I draw upon: images emerge from within the day to day. My process involves marking materials and spaces with time spent: working, writing, and speaking through the voices that form and inform me. I bind layered narrative passages together with functional and symbolic references to personal, and cultural history. I am working in a sculptural format that integrates the dramatic presentation of a stage set, with the oral tradition of storytelling, while consciously focusing upon private spaces that sometimes exist in the absence of a performer.
I carefully select materials that function as witnesses: recovered old growth wood, unprocessed bees wax, stone, reclaimed fabric; and call upon them as a sentient witness and reminder of the resilience of those who came before me.

Reference
www.peasandricepress.com/about-1

Stories Not Yet Spoken: Memory of Gasping by Johnny Coleman, Image 1.

Johnny Coleman
Stories Not Yet Spoken: Memory of Gasping, 1999

Canvas citrus workers' bag, found shovel handle, beehives, lead plank, beeswax, clay, pigment, and audio with sounds of rustling orange branches, water, and traffic

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Center Museum California Center for the Arts, Escondido

Escondido, California

Artist: Johnny Coleman (b. 1958)