Heather L. Johnson: Full Circle

Friday May 19 – Sunday May 21, 2017
Opening Reception Friday May 19 6-9pm
Exhibition continues Saturday and Sunday May 20-21, 12-6pm

Watercolor paintings and hand-stitched embroideries will be on view, based on experiences the artist collected while traveling from Twentynine Palms, CA, to Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2015. ISFB was conceived and put into practice through an artist residency at BoxoHOUSE four years ago, and Heather is delighted to bring this work back to the desert and the community from which it originally sprang.

From Heather: “In Search of the Frightening & Beautiful” began in 2013 with a solo motorcycle tour around the U.S., from my former home in New Jersey, to BoxoHOUSE in Joshua Tree, CA, and back. I have since traveled over 38,000 miles around the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, having have left 47 hand-embroidered art works across the western hemisphere for people to randomly encounter, take and keep. On the road I take pictures and record experiences, stopping for periods to distill it all into new work. The pieces in this exhibition were created through a second residency at Cherryhurst House in Houston, Texas, whose sponsorship made the journey to Argentina possible.”

This project is motivated by a need for connection and understanding in a world governed too frequently by fear, ignorance and mistrust. In Search of the Frightening and Beautiful crosses geographic and cultural boundaries, leaving bits of humanity in its wake in the form of intimate, painstakingly-made gestures let loose in the landscape, set adrift in the world to change hands, context and meaning.

Conceived through the act of riding a motorcycle, this venture embraces risk and vulnerability to record and testify to the “frightening and beautiful”: to the coincidences, contradictions and struggles revealing the essence of human experience. With a little bit of luck, it will eventually make its way around the world.

https://www.facebook.com/TheFrighteningAndBeautiful/
http://thefrighteningandbeautiful.blogspot.com/
https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/ephemeral-gesture-heather-johnsons-nomadic-journeys
https://boxoprojects.com/

BoxoHOUSE is located at 62732 Sullivan Road, Joshua Tree, CA 92252. Highway 62 to White Feather, south on White Feather to Sullivan, west on Sullivan). Please do not use GPS though Google Maps and Waze are correct.