April Zanne Johnson

Lives and works in 90 Yellow Frame Rd.,attn: Barn, Newton NJ 07860

Artist statement

I am interested in reinvention, materials, experimentation, and the emergence of subconscious clutter. The work I make, often resembling a fertile inner realm of disorienting environments may include sound forms, cyphers, architectural, landscape, and body references. This is a darkly utopian place that mixes personal myth and memories. The sculptures and installation are a realization of my painted or drawn images, separate, yet symbiotic. Since 2020 I have been creating a large installation of work that includes eight large scale graphite drawings on graphite on white paper, fourteen sculptures made from a lifetime of collected objects, obsolete technology, wood and fabric and a large scale, four panel painting. I consider these pieces one work of art. I intend for the work to be viewed together. The two-year project is about communication, vulnerability, loss, hope, myth, memory and finally metamorphosis. The drawings are filled with body reference, landscape and architectural references. They are intended to feel like very large pages from a small sketchbook. Sentences and words are written over and over until obliterated. All the drawings and paintings have a frenetic feeling. The sculptures have hard and soft shells, beech bough spines and armatures and contain obsolete information in the form of poems torn from notebooks, love letters received, emails printed, and a myriad of disassembled cell phone and computer components. Photographs, pages from outdated academic...

Artwork