Welcoming artist Lindsay Johnson to the Side Street Gallery for her first solo show.
In a complex year checkered with grief and trauma, rest and resilience, we somehow learned to swim right before we began to drown. Parenthood especially felt harder than ever as we navigated working from home, school at home, and our own physical and mental well-being during a time of narrowing options. Amidst harrowing health scares and racial trauma, parents determined what to share with their children, what to shield them from, and how to preserve moments of joy.
Artist mother and educator, Lindsay Johnson constructed these narrative works on panels with acrylic, photographs, or found material to reconstruct moments in time, ideas, and dreams during the Covid-19 pandemic. The blue used throughout many of these works are made from disposable surgical masks, placed as sky, to emphasize the invisible yet inescapable force that both pulled us apart and under, and propelled us forward and together.
Lindsay Johnson is a mixed media artist who has exhibited nationally including Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, Drury University in Missouri, and East Tennessee State University among others. She has participated in residencies and fellowships at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Parsons School of Design in NYC, and Kobakant in Berlin. Lindsay also teaches art at the middle school level and has contributed to the Illinois Art Education Association, Arts Alliance Illinois, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Teacher Advisory Committee. She holds a BFA in Visual Communication from The University of Kansas, and two graduate degrees in education from National-Louis University.
