DESCRIPTION OF WORK

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Kiel Johnson employs animated lines with subtle color to depict objects that might first appear nonsensical—blimps, wheelchairs, a tangle of plugs and wires. But a closer look reveals them to be metaphors for human beings and relationships. Johnson’s offbeat drawings are best described as diary entries, hyperbolized glimpses of his everyday life captured on paper. “I want people to get a chance to see inside my brain and to smile, laugh, wonder,” he says. “I want them to ask questions—not deep, super-analytical questions, but strange, funny questions.” His works are also whimsical prototypes for sculpture yet to be built, two-dimensional explorations of how objects—and the world—function. Most pieces begin with connections of moments that others might dismiss as mere coincidence.   For example, “The Party” (shown above with Johnson), a grouping of chairs drawn in Conté crayon, graphite and acrylic, sprang to life after Johnson had several encounters with chairs—both the four-legged and academic-department varieties—in one day. “It’s moments like that, these strange coincidences, that spark something amazing,” he says.

METHODOLOGY

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Johnson usually begins each piece with a quick Conté drawing or a blast of color to energize the page. Then he lets the work itself take over. “The piece really does begin to communicate as soon as I make some marks,” he says. “Sometimes it seems to know where it wants color, line and new shapes before I do. Occasionally I get lucky, and a great color accidentally mixes or a shape that I never saw before suddenly comes forward. Then the piece takes on a whole new direction.”

SUBJECT MATTER

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Inanimate, common objects populate Johnson’s universe, and he thrives on giving them life. Globes, tools, even Dumpsters can take center stage in the worlds he creates. And he doesn’t have to look far for inspiration; he sometimes finds his muse right outside his front door. “There’s a Dumpster outside my place,” he says, explaining why he’s contemplating drawing one. “It always fills up in different configurations and with different materials, but the Dumpster stays the same, and I’ve just been watching it and thinking about how it feels.”

ARTISTIC EVOLUTION

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As an imaginative boy, Johnson used to tell all who cared to listen about his future plans as a cartoonist or Claymation artist. His first accomplished pieces were probably small scenarios of army life copied from Mad magazine, he says. Then, in his high school art class, his world opened up. “That was probably the time I decided without a doubt that I was going to make something with my hands,” he says. A key moment in his evolution came when he received an invitation to submit a piece to a show called “Potluck.” “I didn’t have anything, so I drew this field filled with all these pots, pans and other various cooking contraptions. Everybody was just having a good time out in the field.” The piece was a hit, Johnson says. “I realized I could take anything and somehow find beauty and form in it, and transform it in my own way.”

MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

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Johnson cites the artists whom he has worked with as most influential. Specifically, he notes ceramist Pal Wright, who, Johnson says, “could draw so well that I think about his drawings every time I’m working.” It was Wright, in fact, who showed Johnson how to find inspiration in the commonplace. Wright also helped him discover art’s rich history. “When you are a kid living in the suburbs of Kansas City, you don’t know too much about the history of art,” Johnson says.

ARTISTIC INSPIRATIONS

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Johnson cites Claes Oldenburg’s “confident mark-making, line weight, scale and the way he brings life to simple, everyday objects” as among his reasons for admiring the artist. Johnson’s other influences from what he calls the “famous artist club” include Egon Schiele, Arshile Gorky and Willem de Kooning as well as William T. Wiley and H.C. Westermann.

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

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Awards include Harry and Jesse Jacobs Prize, 1997; Helen and Kevin Hoover Award, 1997; Marilyn Werby Memorial Scholarship for the Arts, 2002; California State University, Long Beach, Creative Achievement Award, 2003.