Metalscapes, an exhibit of Judy Miller Johnson’s mixed-media paintings and jewelry, opened last week at Gallery 9 in downtown Los Altos. The creations represent a whole new direction in her art, she said, not only in medium and style, but in her method of working.
For the past two decades Johnson has specialized in all forms of printmaking, especially etching, and her images have been detailed and concrete, and fully envisioned in her mind’s eye before she even begins to work. The unstructured approach she took in creating the paintings featured in the Gallery 9 exhibit was completely new for her, she said.
“This art is out of experience,” Johnson said of her paintings. “It is unplanned. None of it was intentional. As it happened, I would recognize it.”
The paintings are done on pure rag paper, using a variety of media, including oil paints, watercolors, ink, water-soluble relief ink, metallic inks and konte, which Johnson described as a drawing tool similar to chalk. In some of the paintings, abstract images emerge out of broad brush strokes; in others, silver-tinged images of the moon stand out against dark skies. She also did all the matting and framing for her paintings, making the frames by hand.
Designing a collection of jewelry was also a new experience for Johnson. The earrings and necklaces featured in her exhibit reflect images of the sea or the mountainous landscape of her native Thayne, Wyoming, near Jackson, where she still lives for half the year, spending the rest of her time in Cupertino. The pieces are constructed of silver, copper or gold, and some are studded with single gemstones such as turquoise, amber, malachite, amethyst and opals.
Johnson didn’t begin formal training as an artist until she was an adult. She earned bachelor’s degrees in education and home economics from the University of Utah, and began to take art courses only after moving to the Bay Area as a young woman studying at De Anza, Cabrillo and West Valley community colleges and at San Jose State University. That she has become a full-time artist comes as no surprise to her. “I was born an artist,” she said. “Whatever I did involved creating an image … I’m very passionate about what I do … The most wonderful thing for me is the feeling of being so involved in the art that I lose myself in it.”
Johnson has dedicated the exhibit to the memory of Dorothy LaBadie, a 26-year Los Altos resident and active patron of the arts at Gallery 9, who died Jan. 1 at age 84.
Metalscapes will remain on exhibit at Gallery 9, 143 Main St., through April 21. Gallery hours are 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.
