Sue Johnson’s “Maquette for Forest Room” as part of her site-specific installation American Dreamscape, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
Professor of Art Sue Johnson’s one-person exhibition, “American Dreamscape,” opens at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University on Oct. 3. Johnson will give a lecture on the exhibition, starting at 6 p.m., immediately followed by the opening reception.
American Dreamscape features mixed media work by Johnson, whose work is grounded in the genres of the still life and vanitas, and explores the history of collections and collectors. Bringing together ways of seeing the domestic ‘American dream’ through objects that are transformed by Johnson from 1950s idealized domestic interiors, American Dreamscape is about contemporary abundance and excess. Featuring several new works to be shown publicly for the first time, American Dreamscape presents a fresh vision of the world—a vast imaginary landscape full of consumables.
In conjunction with Johnson’s American Dreamscape, Professor of Anthropology Iris Carter Ford will present the lecture “Material Culture at Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space and Stuff” on Thursday, Nov. 7, starting at 6 p.m. in the Frances J. Niederer Auditorium, Visual Arts Center. Ford’s lecture will address issues of space, objects, and the social dramas of home that play a profound role in shaping human experience.