Artist Q&A: Tamara Johnson

Dallas-based artist Tamara Johnson is known for her witty sculptural works depicting ubiquitous household objects. Her handcrafted objects are shaped from materials as varied as copper and concrete and are meticulously painted.  

Johnson received the 2022–2023 Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Fellowship, which included a residency at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University and a SLAM exhibition. For Currents 123: Tamara Johnson, she created a new sculptural installation and video essay. To give a deeper insight into her practice and inspiration, Johnson answered the following questions about Currents 123, which is on view through September 22, 2024. 

How does humor play a role in your practice? 

Humor is a vital tool in my work, almost like another material. From my SLAM installation, the Cracker with Cheese and Fake Blue Tape installed on the wall as you exit the gallery act as moments of levity. These objects allow viewers to feel as though they are in on the joke and can see behind the scenes, conceptually. I think humor is always a way to build a bridge; it also allows us to hold two contradictory facts at once. In most of my projects and installations, I use objects that have a familiar and relatable quality, allowing me to reach a broad audience while eliciting curiosity. Toying with the meanings and functions of these objects helps to create tensions within their meaning. For instance, American Cheese Tiles looks at the formal similarities of processed cheese slices and a kitchen sponge. The sponge possesses a more organic makeup (vegetable cellulose) than the cheese, yet we eat the cheese and use the sponge as a tool.  

Can you discuss the thought process that went into the materials and chemical reactions used to make the works? 

With each material I use (pewter, concrete, rubber, gypsum, etc.), I am thinking about the individual elements, chemical reactions, and historical contexts of those materials. Many of the materials have a simple formation: Mix elements together, apply or release heat, and a new material is formed. Concrete is composed of cement, sand, aggregate, and water—all materials that are locally extracted from a particular site. Sometimes my objects reference the processes of their materiality—the Waffle Cone Column is pigmented cement and is paired with a (real) North Texas ammonite fossil at its base. This fossil is essentially limestone, the main ingredient to create lime, which hardens concrete. Other times, the history of a material is used to contrast the content or fragility of the object—an ephemeral saltine cracker is cast in pewter, a material that is stable and long lasting, upending how we view permanence. 

Why the cracker? 

The cracker holds so many functions. It can act as a pseudo sponge inside the body, absorbing toxins, easing nausea, and calming an upset stomach, or it can be used as a material to thicken soups and create a crispy coating. During my time teaching at Washington University, I also discovered the soda cracker was popularized by F. L. Sommer & Co, a baking company based in Missouri. At the time, I was replicating other objects that served as a metaphor for the filtering systems of the body (liver, lungs, kidney)—things like colanders and kitchen sponges, and the cracker seemed to be the next logical step. I wanted them to be beautiful and durable, so I cast them in pewter, a very soft metal, and painted them using a variety of fast-drying oil paints and varnishes. They end up being both objects and small paintings. 

How did you decide how to lay out the exhibition space, and what was the motivation behind leaving the walls mostly blank? 

The layout took about a year to resolve. I made a small model of the gallery with tiny versions of my sculptures and moved them around on the platform until I reached a nice balance. It was important the sculptures had the largest footprint in the gallery and highlighted the historical context of still-life painting. Flemish and Dutch still life often have a darker background and shallow foreground (hence the low wall lighting in the gallery), forcing the items on display to hold the spotlight and unravel narrative, symbolism, and metaphor. I was very influenced by Walter Peterhans’s Good Friday Enchantment (1929) photograph in the SLAM collection, Clara Peeters’ Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels (1615), and the early trompe l’oeil optical illusion paintings of John Haberle. The other small objects on the wall are little clues for the viewer, pointing them back to the sculptures at the center of the room. There is also a literal finger—a finger keychain—positioned amongst the copper tickets that acts as a director helping guide the viewer’s eye around the platform.