RANDY JOHNSTON

Represented by Pucker Gallery since 2008
RESIDES: River Falls, Wisconsin

"The reality that is the starting point of my work is the choice to investigate the formal range of the vessel structure in clay, and the belief in the potential that the images must entertain, suggest a narrative, and allude to things outside of themselves. The largest question is how to invest my art with life, force, dignity and with a sensibility to the process and material. I am interested in this process as a means to manifest ideas and form. Categories are not important. The ongoing pursuit to enlarge the boundaries of conventional perceptions is essential.

I would hope in this work there is a glimmer of a unity that art has enjoyed in earlier ages and other cultures, when it has been less jealous of its autonomy, and more willing to share its functions with religion and magic. For each of us, this work becomes a symbol for attitudes, sensibilities and philosophies, some of which are shared, by directly articulating the perception of the user/spectator whose world the work has entered. The involvement with materials and making does not present itself as a dominant and simple factor, but rather as the center of a complex of ambiguities."

Randy Johnston's Artist Statement, 1991

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