Collections by Michelle Brown WSG Artist Verlena L. Johnson

Verlena Johnson was born in Chicago and grew up in Madison and Beloit Wisconsin but now calls California home.
She is a multimedia artist whose artwork includes drawing, painting, sculpture, puppetry, performance and video. Her art is often figurative and conveys a narrative. exploring racial and gender identity—how they are constructed, their social/cultural/political meaning, and her relationship to them.

She shares her journey in expressing art from the political to the personal. Especially interesting is how she brings her energy work, her spirituality into her art. Various symbols that appear in mysticism, e.g., halos, spirals, and birds appear in much of her work.

Halos are depicted in many of the pieces and symbolize the subject’s divinity (her belief is that we are all divine). While halos often have religious origins, for Verlena they represent a figure’s life force or the energy That Moves Through ALL Things.

She says "Further, circles represent continuity, connectivity and the cycle of life (ideas present amongst many African and Native American people). Spirals represent spiritual development, eternity, the slow reveal of things that are hidden and feminine energy. Birds symbolize the communication with Spirit and our connection to the Divine, as well as spiritual evolution. Feathers are also depicted in her art to symbolize Divinity and as a nod to her Salish Kootenai ancestors.

She earned an M.A. from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Afro-American Studies with an emphasis in Art History.  She earned an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Sculpture and studied wood carving with Ghanaian Master Wood-carvers, Djam Vivie & Kwakou Gerai.