Michael E. Johnson, Dallas artist. I ChronicleCulture
Hand-painted time capsules of Black culture.
Hand-painted time capsules of Black culture.
Time capsules of Black culture. Each painting is one icon, one date and one quote, built like the signage of its era. Start with the featured piece, then swipe through by subject.
1987. A Kansas City Royals outfielder signs with the Los Angeles Raiders and plays both sports in the same year. Two uniforms, two cities, one summer, split down the middle of the canvas with the stencil year holding it together.
Jerseys, numbers and the moments that made the highlight reel.
Release dates, recording dates and the records that raised him.
Spike Lee's Brooklyn and the Saturday morning lineup.
The trendsetters luxury caught up to, and the names on the signs.
A series that began in 2015. The drawings take the minstrel imagery that was used to degrade Black people and turn it around, pairing stylized characters with hard black and white line work to tell Black stories on their own terms. Icons of sport, music and film sit beside pieces on school, work, grief and the street. The point is the conversation they start.
The sign from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, held up again.
The people and institutions the work has stood beside, hung for, or been collected by.
Michael E. Johnson is a painter and illustrator based in Dallas, Texas. He studied advertising art at Prairie View A&M University and painting at the University of Houston, and he builds every canvas the way a billboard or an album cover is built: stencil numerals, caution stripes, a directional arrow, a quote in the subject's own words, and a figure drawn with the heavy outline of a comic book.
The paintings sit in the line that runs from Warhol and Lichtenstein through Shepard Fairey, KAWS and Nina Chanel Abney. What he adds to it is the Black perspective he never saw in that imagery growing up, and the discipline of a trained graphic designer. He calls the series The Chronicles because each piece is a time capsule: a person, a year and a moment that changed the culture.
“I chronicle culture. I grew up on the ads, cartoons, album covers and box scores of the 1980s and 90s, and I paint the people who made them matter: the trendsetters of hip hop, jazz, sports, film and style whose influence on American culture is everywhere and credited almost nowhere. I want the work to inspire awareness of Black history and culture in America, start the conversation, and get the credit right.”
Michael E. JohnsonWhere the work has shown, what it has won, and who has written about it.
All 'N All, National Juneteenth Museum, Fort Worth (Kinfolk House and the Fort Worth African American Museum and Cultural Center) · Written in the Stone, solo, Plano African American Museum · Sports and Arts: Catalyst for Change, solo, Willow Bend Center of the Arts · Art + Sound, AudioConcepts, Richardson · Sprite Living Tracklist, Los Angeles
Lenora Rolla 12th Annual Juried Art Show, 400H Gallery, Fort Worth · Dallas College West Dallas · Spellman Museum, Forney
And One and 30 to Infinity with SLAM, The Local Gallery, New York · Hennessy Arena, Dallas · Recent Work, Tarrant County College
Spike Lee: Creative Sources, Brooklyn Museum, New York · HIP HOP 50: A Visual Revolution, Chuck D's Art Collective, Fulton Center, New York · Together We Sing, solo, Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center, Dallas · 50 Years of Hip-Hop, Dallas City Hall · Griot, Deep Ellum Foundation · McKinney Performing Arts Center · McKesson Imagination Lab
Black Market Bodega, Plush Gallery, Dallas · Chaos 8, Ro2 Art, Dallas · Juneteenth Art Auction, Texas Wesleyan University · Cold Soda Boutique · Neighborhood Store Gallery
Holding Space, 500X Gallery, Dallas · The Other Art Fair Dallas · Pencil on Paper Gallery · Irving Arts Center · Msanihous Fine Art Gallery, Carrollton · Spin: The Art of Music, Frome, UK · Family Affair, Houston
First Come First Serve, Fort Works Art, Fort Worth. First showing of the Faceblackness series.
Every commission starts as a conversation. Some people come with a specific icon and a date in mind. Others come with a wall, a room, an event or an idea and want to work it out together. Both are the right way to start.
Mike has painted for a filmmaker's office, a jazz agency, a performing arts center, museums, brands and family living rooms. Chronicles, pen and ink, large single canvases, multi-panel pieces, live painting at events, and work built for AR. If it belongs in his world, it's worth a conversation.
Commissions, exhibitions, press and collectors. Replies come from Mike.