Julie Johnson pushes art for science’s sake

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of four articles about students who have received Mary Gates research and leadership grants.

By Steve Hill
University Week

OK, she freely admits it. Julie Johnson is no scientist. “Growing up, I hated science,” the Mary Gates Scholar said recently, laughing as she recalled her high school struggles with the subject. “Now, I’m interested in the process of science but not interested in doing it.”

It’s not that Johnson was antiscience. It just didn’t speak to her in the context of a science classroom. So now, Johnson is pulling science from the lab and putting it in the art gallery.

The UW senior is working on what might be called the science exhibition for the nonscientist. Genesis: Contemporary Art Explores Human Genomics, which opens at the Henry Art Gallery in February 2002, will be a sort of sounding board for the average person who has concerns about the future role genetics might play in our society. And in reality, it’s more about art than science.

Johnson’s participation in the project is the result of a Mary Gates Research Grant. During the past five years almost 500 undergraduates - paired with faculty, staff and community mentors - have worked on such experiential learning projects. With the grant money, students like Johnson are able to focus for two or three quarters on an area of interest without the distraction of a job most students rely on to supplement income. It’s been an invaluable learning experience for Johnson.

Julie Johnson stands with her artwork, "exPress/imPress," which is currently on display at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery.

“It’s huge,” she said. “It’s a turning point, not an isolated event that happens in a classroom. I kind of feel like this is in between undergrad and graduate school. This is a more challenging, engaging and enriching project than you generally have as an undergrad.”

Working with two mentors - Robin Held, curator at the Henry Art Gallery, and Phillip Thurtle, a lecturer in Comparative History of Ideas and the School of Communications - Johnson is helping to plan the Genesis exhibition. She spent the fall quarter compiling information about contemporary artists interested in genetic research and scientific advancement.

As slides and other supplemental material from those artists started arriving at the Henry, Johnson and Held worked side by side, evaluating the work to determine how it might fit into the exhibit. That task is an important contribution but her work goes even further, according to Held.

“I have never wanted this relationship to be just about the tasks we need to complete for this exhibition,” Held said. “She is an active participant and a sounding board as we plan the exhibition. But we’ve also discussed issues that interest both of us, like how audiences here interact with artwork. I think it’s been useful and has helped her think about the audience for her own work.”

Johnson, who is majoring in sculpture and comparative history of ideas, says she has gained an understanding of and appreciation for the work of curators like Held. She hopes that someday she’ll be able to work as an artist and an independent curator.

And she agrees with her mentor. Seeing the work of other artists has helped Johnson mature as an artist. At one time Johnson liked to put seemingly unrelated materials together for some aesthetic purpose, but now there’s an intellectual core to her work.

“I have always had a curiosity about putting things into another context,” she said. “There was always a relationship there, but it wasn’t nearly as informed. Now I feel more of a conceptual responsibility. It’s not just putting some stuff together. It’s sort of like writing a paper.”

Likewise, she sometimes draws inspiration from the written word. Johnson said a class of Thurtle’s led her to read cultural theorists like Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger. Such reading has given her a creative spark.

“The critical theorists we read were so amazing,” she recalled about the class she took a year and a half ago. “It really got my imagination going. The ideas were just bouncing off the page.”

That says as much about Johnson’s intellectual abilities as it does her artistry, according to Thurtle.

“Julie has been able to apply theory,” he said. “She’s been able to find a practical component to it. That’s often underrated and is very important as a pedagogical tool. It gives students some concrete terms in order to think about abstract principles.”

It’s that kind of thinking process that has helped Johnson’s work grow more intellectually focused - a trait usually found in more experienced artists, according to Held.

“She’s got a very mature perspective,” Held said. “It’s unusual for someone at this point in her development as an artist. I think it will serve her well.”

Done well, art can be a powerful tool for considering an array of topics, even those based in the sciences, according to Johnson. In fact, she says, art has a way of making highly technical subjects like the Human Genome Project accessible to a larger audience.

“By approaching the Human Genome Project from this arena, there’s more room for discourse,” she said about the Genesis exhibition. “We’re not letting the discussion be dictated by science and technology. Science happens within a culture, not outside of culture. We’re trying to erase that dichotomy - that science-art thing. They each happen within the same system.”

And separating the two is difficult, or perhaps, unnecessary, from Johnson’s perspective. Her work, exPress/imPress, currently on display in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, injects a dose of humanity into the rapidly changing field of communication technologies. The artwork combines real human teeth with a manual typewriter to serve as a reminder that technology can’t replace human beings.

“We’ve fetishized our technologies so much and put so much hope in them, but there really is no escape from the body. It all starts and finishes with the body. Even the Internet isn’t transcending body.”

And, if Johnson has anything to say about it, science won’t transcend art either.