Patricia Johanson: The World as a Work of Art
Selected Writings and Interviews (working title)
A voluminous publication of writings by American eco-artist Patricia Johanson, compiled and edited by Roel Arkesteijn, will appear in the fall of 2023. The book marks the beginning of the new Art & Ecology research group, and hopes to give the impressive, exemplary artistic-ecological program Johanson has developed since the late 1960’s international dissemination and prominence as one of the best practices for eco-artists.
Still relatively unknown to a wider audience, Patricia Johanson (New York City, 1940) rapidly gained prominence in the United States over the last decade - on the one hand as a female Minimal artist; on the other as an eco-art pioneer, recognized as a role model by younger generations of ecofeminists. As early as 1969, Johanson developed a visionary, coherent ecological program in which she devised sculptural solutions to environmental problems, planning issues, urban development and the loss of natural habitats of plants and animals. In each case, her work is conceived on a landscape scale and focused on practical implementation. She designs complete landscapes or habitats, in which local plant and animal communities are restored and in which she creates meeting places between human beings and other organisms.
From the 1980’s onwards, Johanson realized several commissions in public spaces. At Fair Park Lagoon in Dallas, Texas (1981-1986), for example, she transformed a dead lagoon with slimy algae and eroding shoreline edges into an ecologically rich habitat and inviting park. The floor plan is based on the shapes of a local aquatic plant and a fern from the area. For the Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility in Petaluma, California (2000-2009), she developed a giant park around a water treatment plant, whose floor plan is shaped like a Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse: an endangered local mouse species that lives in the marsh. Johanson's park includes not only a water treatment plant, but also a stormwater collection and treatment facility, farmland, nature and recreation area.
The publication aims to reconstruct and provide insight into the genesis context and development of Patricia Johanson's work using mostly previously unpublished artist's texts; to highlight the central place Johanson's methodology fulfills as the main "ideologue" within eco-art; and to explore the significance of her work and its tools for current, younger generations of artists. "Her writings (-) are a cornucopia of possibilities for environmental art and planning that are still being 'discovered' today," the committed American art critic Lucy R. Lippard wrote of Johanson back in 2006.
The lavishly illustrated publication will include some 160 texts, letters and interviews by Johanson, including a recent new interview between Johanson and Arkesteijn produced for this occasion. The book will run to 544 pages and will be designed by Caroline de Lint. It will be published by Track Report and Fieldwork Museum.