Form and Fascination

Sculptural pieces by Eric Johnson in ex·cerpt at the Palos Verdes Art Center

By Bondo Wyszpolski, Contributor 

If a flying saucer crashed in a remote area and spilled its interstellar cargo, but you arrived ahead of everyone else and quickly placed several of Eric Johnson’s sculptures among the scattered debris, it would probably take investigators a long time before they realized that some of the “wreckage” might have originated here on Earth.

I mention this, only half-jokingly, because Johnson’s biomorphic, post-minimalist work doesn’t seem utilitarian or to serve any logical purpose. Except maybe for aliens.

Johnson, who has a labyrinthine warehouse-studio in San Pedro, has been a solid fixture of the L.A art scene for, I don’t know, at least since the 1990s. At this point in his life, now at 76 years old, he’s an artist’s artist, and well respected by everyone I’ve ever spoken with.

The work that goes on view at the Palos Verdes Art Center is largely from the last 30 years, a carefully chosen selection of shapes and designs that also reveals the evolution of Johnson’s thinking and experiments in wood and resin and color and, more recently, his focus on two different forms of art, the geometric and the biomorphic, one hard-edged and the other visually pliable. Not exactly Jekyll and Hyde, but it might take you a while to guess that the same person was involved in both pursuits.

“It seems I often have to have two things going on,” Johnson says, “two old cars, two bodies of work. Always. And I don’t think it has anything to do with being a Gemini. Early on, when I’d do commissions, I’d always make two pieces in case one fails. You keep going with the two pieces and then as soon as one gives you a problem you push it aside and finish it later — but you change it into something else.”

Another way to see this is that one work remains obedient while the other veers off because it has a mind of its own, which Johnson recognizes (and allows) because when he returns to it later he’s giving it more leeway to become what it apparently wants to become.

That also points up the difference between the geometric work and the biomorphic. I’m not so sure why Johnson tries to keep them in separate cages, because if some cross-fertilization took place there could be some boy-girl sparks and fireworks. Be that as it may, there’s certainly a contrast and a dialogue of sorts when both styles are paired side-by-side. And, lest it be ignored, both approaches have their intellectual challenges.

A long time ago, Johnson was told that the problem with his work, referring to the intense labor that went into it but was effectively camouflaged, was that “you make it look like it’s easy.” Johnson laughs, repeating this. “But it’s not. To achieve, especially with the geometric work, the trueness of it, there’s a lot of sanding, and really eyeballing it, and there’s a lot of long hours.” Sometimes, with the sleek, streamlined work, its simplicity betrays the calculations and strenuous effort.

Take, for example, the ballerina-like beauty of Johnson’s recent Madame X series, sinewy shapes comprised of resin and automotive pigments, gracefully spiraling upwards, Constantin Brancusi by way of John Singer Sargent.

Did your eye pause when you read the word “automotive”?

On his father’s side of the family, Johnson says, all of the men were involved with cars, building them, restoring them, even racing them. “I watched them all of the time,” he says. However, “There was a pact among my family never to teach me how to use any of the tools because they wanted me to go into higher education. And because it’s difficult work. So I had to learn all of that just from watching them and teaching myself.”

What he absorbed from the sidelines has stayed with him to this day.

“All of the tools I use for my work are automotive-related tools because they’re the heartiest and most effective tools.” (The exception would be the tools that he’s created specifically for one complex project or another.) But out of watching his relatives doing body work, he put what he observed to good use: “Every couple of years I’d get a car that’s been derelict for 20, 30 years, and then get it running and take it back to the original (condition) and sell it. That was my hobby. But I stopped doing that because basically I wanted to focus on just making art.”

Camping out with good friends

Johnson is frequently considered a California Light and Space artist with a surf and car culture vibe, part of what’s referred to as “finish fetish.” He was a studio assistant to Tony DeLap and Craig Kauffman, as well as close friends with Larry Bell and DeWain Valentine. Long ago, his father had given him some advice which was along the lines of find someone who’s an expert in what you want to know and befriend them. Or, as I tell myself, if you want something, go to the place where it’s likely to be found. And so, way back in 1969, Johnson met and became steady pals with Bell and Valentine and learned a great deal from both of them.

Johnson points out that, in the history of art, there are periods of time, which can last a decade or two or maybe a century, in which artists are essentially in the same camp. That is, a certain style (Mannerism, for example) comes into vogue and it’s explored or milked for a couple of generations until the next trend or movement comes along. “I would be in the camp of people,” Johnson says, “who’ve made resin for the last 40-50 years.”

Let me forestall anyone who might think, well, you’re just reinventing the wheel. A better way to see this is that maybe now someone can come along and invent a better wheel. And so, while admiring the mass casting of Peter Alexander and DeWain Valentine, works that could outweigh an elephant, Johnson had his own ideas.

“I wanted to make work using resin,” he says, “because I like what you can do with it, but I wanted to achieve scale without all of the weight.” And in this approach, he found his own niche, which was also a contribution to a furthering of the Light and Space movement. We see the framework and the resin membrane covering it. Sometimes these objects look like they were washed up by the tide. Some of them seem to glow from within. “I want to investigate light,” Johnson says, “reflecting skin penetration.”

Early on in Johnson’s career he was interested in fractals and astrophysics, and other scientific building blocks so integral to his geometric work, which is no less a part of his biomorphic pieces. “Through abstracted DNA strands and the study of wavelength patterns, my artwork bears witness to this research.” Indeed. Personally, I think that Johnson could have become an important architect since his vision seems on par with Frank Gehry or Peter Zumthor.

When asked what he’d like viewers to take away from the show, which is being curated by his good friend and fellow San Pedro artist Ron Linden, Johnson is at a bit of a loss. After all, shouldn’t the work simply speak for itself? But if there’s an answer, it might be this. Come in with an open mind and a capacity for wonder.

As we conclude our talk, Johnson says that, “On a personal level, on a social level, I would like to see the arts appreciated a bit more.” He points out that often young people are gungho about becoming an artist, “until it comes time to make a living.” That’s when the first big hurdle rears up.

“When I was teaching, if a student would say, ‘Oh, I want to do this and that (but) it’s too hard,’ I would tell them, always, you’re not an artist if you think of something and it becomes too hard. Then you’re not solving any problems.” Of course we have to recognize and work within our limitations. Even so, “If you think of a piece and it’s difficult, you have to build it.”

Eric Johnson might just as well have been speaking to himself, because he’s pursued those difficult pieces again and again and I see no indication that he’s about to call it a day.

Eric Johnson: ex·cerpt

Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday -Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 25 to Nov. 15 

Cost: Free

Details: 310-541-2479; visit pvartcenter.org

Venue:Palos Verdes Art Center, 5504 Crestridge Road, Rancho Palos Verdes