Steven Anthony Johnson II

BIO

2017 from the New York Academy of Art. Utilizing the language of drawing, animation, and contemporary printing processes, their work attempts to make peace between the religious, intellectual, and humanistic ideals in relation to Blackness and “Otherness”. Their drawings utilize traditional techniques with abstracted senses of temperature and value to achieve a modern sense of realism.

STATEMENT

I draw intimate scenes in an effort to reframe the way we talk about Blackness. Through strokes of charcoal and graphite, I make Blackness and darkness the protagonist. In this manner, I shift the paradigm which considers whiteness/ light the dominant formal aspect across the paper. Working from memory, interviews, verbal histories, and family keepsakes, I navigate a cross-generational, cross-cultural, and cross-diasporic hypothesis of what I would say to a biological child of mine—unbesmirched by the colonized imagination. Some of these materials are fragmented or damaged, told secondhand, or else gleaned from painful memories half-remembered; others are passed down by elders to metabolize inherited trauma. I then transmogrify these artifacts into a visual love letter to possible inheritors of that trauma. Channeling intergenerational resistance, wisdom, and resilience, my drawings and activities explore the counter-narrative necessary to eclipse the burden of inherited and bestowed trauma central to Black and Othered bodies.

Interview with Steven Anthony Johnson II

Written by Andreana Donahue

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? What were some early influences?

Making art for me was sort of an accident. I wanted to be so many things, a baker, a videogame designer, filmmaker, a doctor, a nutritionist, etc. The idea of making Art seriously didn’t exist until after I took my first drawing class. The calling found me, not the other way around (haha)

Originally, I started as a painter that was sort of dissatisfied with the legibility of painting across language. I couldn’t get my Grandmother to respond to my overly educated and nuanced image-making; and she was the smartest person I knew, even with a 4th grade education. What interested me in wanting to be a draftsperson was the need to bridge that gap. Drawing was accessible to everyone I knew, and that accessibility was disarming--which is huge in an environment that requires hyper-vigilanceas a cost of living.

That disarmed consciousness is able to bridge that gap and blockage of social, emotional, and spatial understanding.

Where are you currently based and what initially attracted you to working in this community? Are there any aspects of this specific place that have surfaced in your work?

I am currently based in both New York and Baltiomre. I travel often back to Baltimore and see family, especially recently to help support my Mother. I think for me “place” is an amorphous concept because I tend to think and experience the world in non-linear space. My most current body of work stemmed from a residency I had in London at the start of 2020 that was cut short; and even though I understand that the physical proximity between Baltimore, New York, and London are variable and vast they feel just as near and tangible as stretched out neighborhoods via emotional proximity. Community for me is an interconnected web of care connections, hopes, dreams, and an imagined reality mutually hoped to be achieved. What attracts me to that working space is the ability to seed all that imaginative power into something tangible to pass on.

Can you tell us about your studio space? What are some of the most crucial aspects of a studio that make it workable for you?

My studio space and practice I feel has become an exercise in carefully considered minimalism. Partly because I am living in Brooklyn, NY. But also, there came a point where materials and stuff just got in the way of me making, seeing, and imagining/envisioning. I work out of my kitchen on a work table, and that has built in restrictions. I kind of have to keep the space clean, clear, and make conscious decisions of what the space is going to be used for that day. My usual day revolves around what I am doing work-wise.

What is a typical day like?

Most days I’ll get up and train in the mornings around 5a (I have been a personal trainer and lifter/mover for over 10 years). Come back, make coffee, sit at the table and just sharpen pencils to get my head in the right space. It's almost formulaic at this point. In some ways it's devotional and ritualistic, nonetheless it’s fluid and reactive. I think I am beyond an idea of a groove or flow at this point, since I tend to just try to make a little progress each day or at least think about something each day regarding the work. With training, the philosophy I usually follow is “just go and see if something happens” and oftentimes those days I don’t “feel” it are more productive than the day I feel ready to go. The same goes with drawing. If I commit to just making a few marks and see how I feel, usually I can get a few hundred and the next I know it’s several hours later.

I think people sleep on just how difficult drawing is. There is an ecology of actions that take place each time you commit to a mark. Each mark is a conversation that speaks to the next one and so on. With that, some marks are only there to be catabolized by the one after. Sometimes, the original mark you make on the paper stays the whole drawing. Now take that and multiply it by the limitation of each pencil, paper, speed of action, lighting conditions, etc. and I have learned I need to keep things super simple to keep the conversation moving. Thousands of marks are made each time I do a drawing, and often multiples of the same drawing are done over top of the previous, sometimes one drawing is seven iterations before anyone sees it. There is always another draft to be done, and then, randomly the work finally speaks back and says “no more” or “good for now” and I have to leave it alone.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

In a lot of ways, I feel as though I have been having the same revolving conversation over the past 8 years. I want to imagine a world where I will only leave a better world to the generation that comes after me. But I am constantly asking myself if the world I live in will ever be safe. If the beautiful Black baby in my mind will ever inherit a world I would be proud to call home. When I visited London, it all kinda started to make sense. There was a mental *click* and I was introduced to a world that didn’t have the same flavour of Afro-pessimism or diasporic apathy I had known in the US. And that made me hope again. It’s not without its own issues and flaws. So I began writing a letter to that hypothetical someone. In the hopes I could unravel and distill what I hope to pass on positively. Simultaneously, I am watching my infant/toddler nephew grow in all this pandemic and racial injustice; that didactic and dynamic meta narrative has really been the driving force behind my recent drawings which have evolved into photographs and audio, etc.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

Prior to the pandemic, I hadn't been able to really work since gradschool. I was always lacking in time, money, and space while struggling to pay rent. I maybe made 3 drawings a year. When I returned from my trip to the UK I was bitter all my showing plans and studio time had been cancelled and I felt really robbed. Thankfully, I had some paper and materials I had bought with my stipend and It was able to get me started when the Pandemic really hit New York City. I drew with abandonment, keeping a schedule every day to draw for a time and to work and look for opportunities. Unfortunately, I feel like life is still in stasis for me but, it has given me room and space to be with my thoughts and generate at my own pace. The big challenge is always the immediate future: waiting for responses from jobs, residencies, grants, etc. and also just keeping a positive outlook in concert with what is going on in the world.

So much of my time during the past 18 months has been voracious consumption of Film, Literature, Audiobooks, bad Netflix runs and the like. I have become ever more in touch with the myriad of conversations and collective imagination. I think we can all say that Art has been the saving grace of our ever rampant anxieties and imaginations. In some ways, at the risk of sounding elitist, I think I work outside of the system Constructive/Disruptive work dichotomy. I want to reflect and imagine what a decolonzied, post-racial truama society looks like in a direct effort to start making visual what some often feels out of reach so it becomes visible to the next generation.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I think I am weird when it comes to what influences me, because they don’t show up in my work in visible ways.. I read and watch a lot of science fiction and high fantasy, because they allow me to envision and imagine places that aren’t the world I live in. They give me hope that there is an “after” beyond what our eyes can actually see. Octavia Butler, Liu Cixin’s, N. K. Jeimsin, Nnedi Okorafor, Andrew Rowe, and Brandon Sanderson have all been strongly contributing to my dreamscapes these past years, I have at least re-read one book from each of them over the past 18 months. Each has helped me navigate the overwhelming pessimism and short sight of the world at large. Three Body Problem, The Broken Earth, and The Stormlight Archive have all been havens for me lately. Podcasts like Friends At The Table and Not Another D and D Podcast have been essential for keeping my imagination fresh.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory?

Naudline Pierre, Anna Park, Darryl B. Smith, and Arcmanoro Niles have all put up amazing exhibitions in the last few weeks. I am shameless to say I call them all friends. Lately, I have been amazed by the ingenuity, optimism, and truth they have all been able to imbue on their surfaces.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

During a questionnaire portion of an IG live with Amy Sherald and Deborah E Roberts I asked Amy for advice for Black artists in general who was frustrated with their trajectory. To which she replied: “Just focus on making good work, they will come.” It has been a lifeline during these uncertain times.

To find out more about Steven Anthony Johnson II check out their Instagram and website.