I’ve been writing about the dresses off and on for the last eight years. On the occasion of this exhibition, Living In Between, I wanted to share some of my writing. I wrote this essay in September of 2001 and called it Obsessed with Dirt.

Just a few months ago I became obsessed with dirt. Getting my hands dirty felt healthy. No garden gloves for me. I wanted to feel the earth, warm and crusty, between my fingers and under my nails. I remember when I moved to southern Illinois more than twelve years ago I was digging gloveless in the dirt then too. The ground was filled with roots, no evidence of green growth, just roots. I pulled and tugged until I was rid of them all.  Later my hands and arms then my legs and torso were covered with a rash. I discovered poison ivy and chiggers the same day. You think I would’ve learned to wear gloves.

The earth, brown and firm, was calling to my skin. I wanted to feel the hard chunks break up under the weight of my grip. I wanted to feel the granules fall through my fingers back to their resting place. I planted green, red, orange, and purple to blossom in spring, in summer, and in early autumn. I hauled stones, blocks, and bricks to form the edges of the living breathing carpets of color. I fixed that old wheelbarrow, the one I haven’t used for ten years. Big trucks backed into my driveway to dump mulch, sand, and stones. Load after load I wheeled from driveway to pathway making it easier for visitors to move from carpet to carpet.

I like to think of my gardens as eclectic. They’re not really English or Japanese-style. A more encompassing term might be chaotic. I adhere to the chaos theory. I can see their organization, but I wouldn’t count on the average gardener seeing a pattern—maybe a theorist or two.

I spent the summer getting down and dirty. A friend suggested it was a pre-menopausal symptom. I may have gone with the explanation myself until a couple of weeks ago. I’m an artist and I’ve been working on a series and spending some time thinking about this body of work. I decided it needed to be more about dirt. I’m obsessed with dirt. I got my shovel out of the shed and I dug a long shallow hole—a grave I guess. I planned on burying a small cigar box.

Over the last few years I’ve been trying to learn to listen to my inner self (Artists, they say, need to be in touch with their inner child since this is where creativity originates.) I should say I had to figure out how to hear it first. Mind you listening to this inner self isn’t always easy. It can be rather embarrassing at times.

A couple of years ago my attentiveness led me to make over 30 girl’s dresses (size 10) out of muslin, a plain natural-colored cotton fabric. The skirts are gathered with about three yards of material, the bodice is plain with a Peter Pan collar. The sleeves are short and gathered at the point where they meet the bodice. I heard you must hang these dresses (all 30 of them) from trees and from cliffs, you must lay them in mud and float them in water. Photograph them. Keep a record. I’ve been doing just that for nearly two years. These dresses have become a community.

Well, I listened again and I buried one—a dress—buried it in this grave along with the white cigar box with gold and black lettering filled with an odd collection of items I think of as mementos. It’s still out there—a dress—under a few inches of dirt. The box of mementos is there too.

You might wonder why I would listen to an inner self that leads me to such an action. Do you think it’s pre-menopausal insanity? Will it go away when I hit the big 5-0? Is it part of an extended mid-life crisis? It seems to me there’s a thin line between insanity and creativity. Maybe I should have worn gloves.

“Congratulations, you have been selected as the 2008 Hungry’s Gallery Photography Grant Recipient!  As the grant recipient, you will be awarded $1000.00 to further your work on your photographic series, “Living In Between,” as well as a solo exhibition at Hungry’s Gallery in April 2009.
This year’s grant competition was juried by Madeline Yale, Executive Director of the Houston Center for Photography.  With over thirty applicants, Ms. Yale had a very challenging job choosing just one artist to be the grant recipient, but as we viewed all of the submissions together, we were blown away by the beautiful images in your “Living In Between” series.  The juror also awarded honorable mentions to three artists: Carey Russell, Teresa Munisteri, and Kristy Peet.”

See links to look at their website.

http://www.lostcanuck.com/studio/exhibitions/afterlife/index_2.html

I have an exhibition opening Friday, October 3 here in Lubbock, TX. Here is part of the press release I sent out.

“Over the past several years, JoAnna Johnson has been photographing empty dresses in natural settings. She has made nearly 100 dresses all in the same style. In this body of work, dragged and dropped, JoAnna uses a single dress she made from a bold graphic black and white print. Within this pattern there is both chaos and order, which mirrored her feelings while JoAnna and her husband settled into their new home in Lubbock.  They moved to Lubbock two years ago and she has been using the process of photographing her dresses to explore her feelings about the move and help her to grieve for the loss of her home and friends in southern Illinois. This dress has traveled with her and been photographed from New York City (her favorite city) to Lubbock, TX (her new home).”

This is the first in a series of exhibitions of the dresses. The second will be at the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA) in December and January and will feature the thirty black dresses and the thirty white dresses and it’s called, Living In Between. The third in the series is still in process. I’ve made 17 dresses in the same style out of old tablecloths only these dresses have full circle skirts. I have actually worked with models this time…little girls 6-12 years old. It’s been interesting to work with inhabited dresses instead of empty ones. More on this later.