Retrospective
Grant Johnson
September 24 - October 11, 2024
Reception: September 27, 5-7pm

Strata Gallery presents Retrospective, by California-based artist Grant Johnson. The exhibition is on view September 24th through October 11th, with a special reception on September 27th from 5-7pm.

Grant Johnson’s work is about our environment. He grew up on a farm and spent a large amount of time outdoors which over the years morphed into an interest in environmental issues. He eventually became an assignment photographer for The Nature Conservancy, for twenty years covering California and Hawaii. 

Johnson produces long-running series of works on topics of landscape ecology such as Water, Landform, Old Growth, and Domesticated Landscapes. He adds to these series when appropriate work is produced based on his own photographs or by processing satellite imagery. He posts informational articles on his website (www.grantjohnson.net), that support the science behind the visual stories he’s creating. 

Grant received a BFA from the University of Arizona where he painted, did lithography and learned about color photography. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 1972, the year the first Landsat images were introduced to the public and not long before the first planetary landscape images were beamed back from Mars. This, along with information about video that he ran across while doing a research paper on painting and photography, convinced him that the future of creative image making would be electronic.

Johnson applied to the Rhode Island School of Design's nascent video department and received the first graduate degree in experimental video awarded by RISD in 1975.

He worked with analog computer systems for video and audio synthesis and eventually their digital counterparts. Landsat imagery was out of reach financially until 2008 when the entire archive entered the public domain, and it became possible to identify a location, collect the satellite images, and compose the columns and rows of images into a large, coherent, very high-resolution landscape.

Strata Gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday – Saturday. For more information about Strata Gallery, the current exhibit, and the future schedule of events, please visit the Strata Gallery website and Instagram.

Grant Johnson, SPIRAL JETTY BY MOONLIGHT, 42 x 60 inches, 2005

Grant Johnson, ILI DELTA WETLANDS, 29 x 63 inches, 2015

Grant Johnson, HAVASUPAI FALLS, 30 x 32 inches, 1980