LeRoy Johnson

From October 7-November 7, 2004, the List Gallery at Swarthmore College will present LeRoy Johnson, Bearing Witness, Views from the Street, an exhibition curated by Andrea Packard and funded by the William J. Cooper Foundation. Johnson's expressive use of clay, wood, and found materials in more than 20 sculptures, sketchbooks, and a 12' installation bear witness to the legacy of racism, oppression, and creative resistance. The artist will give a free public lecture about his 50-year journey as an artist and teacher on Thursday, October 7, at 4:30 p.m. in the Lang Performing Arts Center Cinema. A reception will follow in the gallery from 5:30-7:00 p.m. Gallery hours are Saturdays and Sundays 1-4 p.m.; Wednesdays 12-4 p.m.; Fridays 1-5 p.m. For appointments: 610.328.8488.

The List Gallery is pleased to host the first comprehensive presentation of Johnson's three related series: Street Scene, Men with Hats, and Lynchings. In his Street Scene series, he depicts row houses and surrounding streets from found objects, reproductions, painted elements, and photographs. Through illuminating interiors in works such as Bamboozled (2003), Johnson invites the viewer into private spaces and links exterior and interior worlds. The centerpiece of the exhibition, a 12' x 4' installation of his row houses, marks Johnson's shift from creating discrete objects to forming denser groupings that conjure the intensity and cacophony of a city neighborhood.

Johnson's Lynchings series consists of shallow collaged reliefs, many of them constructed on shallow box supports. Johnson juxstaposes images of actual lynchings with Biblical quotations, literal and implied crosses, news clippings, found objects, and graffiti to link discrete atrocities to the greater history of human struggle. Johnson's Men with Hats series provides a broad cast of urban characters ranging from his own moving Self-portrait, Mourning (2000), to his relief images of inner-city men such as Rasta, Player, and Dawg.

Johnson's rough-hewn, unconventional aesthetic and idiosyncratic personal manner cause some to misrepresent him as a self-taught artist. Although his art education was not completed at a single academy or school, Johnson studied clay in the early 1960s with Isabel Lang at Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia, and, subsequently, with Franz Wildenhain at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Johnson also studied drawing for two years with Carl Sherman at the Philadelphia College of Art. He earned a master of human services from Lincoln University in 1998. Johnson's work has also been informed by his 40-year career teaching art to inner-city school children, disabled adults, incarcerated prisoners, halfway house residents, at-risk teens, and others.

Johnson has had numerous solo exhibitions at venues such as the Clay Studio, Philadelphia; Tirza Yalon Kolton Ceramic Gallery, Tel Aviv; Gloucester County College, Sewell, NJ; Sande Webster Gallery, Philadelphia; and Camden County Historical Society, Camden, New Jersey. He has been included in many group exhibitions at institutions such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gallery X, New York; Philadelphia International Airport; and the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum, Philadelphia. Johnson's awards include two grants from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, grants from the Independence Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and a 5-year residency at the Clay Studio, Philadelphia.

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