October 7–14, 1999

art

All Fired Up

Big talent, big demands – eloquent clay artist Leroy Johnson gets down to work at three area galleries.

by Robin Rice

Leroy Johnson

The Clay Studio, Second Floor Gallery, 139 N. Second St., through Oct. 26, 215-925-3453

"Risk-takers improve the race. You should be as adventurous and courageous as possible. I work every day. I draw every day. You only have talent and potential when you’re a kid. When you’re an adult, you’ve got to realize it." At 62, Leroy Johnson lives his demanding philosophy.

Intense, introspective eyes, economical gestures and a brow alternately corrugated and smooth beneath a clean-shaven head: Focus and eclecticism declare themselves in his appearance. Red high-tops, jeans and a black T-shirt with a Greek vase on it are de rigueur artist-wear. But a simple strand of square blue beads and a thin silver chain heavy with amulets, including a cylinder of amber, a Jerusalem cross and a small silver face disc, hint at Johnson’s wide-ranging interests and recent travels. An elastic bandage on one wrist is a reminder that working clay is hard on old injuries.

As he prepares for his last solo show at the Clay Studio, where he’s been a resident artist for five years, he’s "trying to make people understand that I know clay thoroughly but I don’t consider myself a potter; I consider myself an artist."

Johnson’s ceramic houses incorporating bits of metal, wood, glass, plastic, and other materials are widely admired. He also makes and shows paintings, book works and flame-singed pit-fired vessels. Right now, he’s concentrating on the slab-built houses and a group of hand-built, wall-mounted angels and crucifixes.

When he began making tabletop rowhouses in 1992 or ’93 – he’s not sure – they reflected devastated structures in his own neighborhood. All are in ruins, open to the sky and to our gaze. They have a worn, loved and abused humanity, dignity and pathos. Small crosses on unpretentious places of worship, graffiti (which Johnson doesn’t exactly like but understands – "I know they’re just trying to get their names out, poor little things") and rich interior details are distilled from observation. The letters "NO" name the place: North Philly. The houses "say something about the whole gestalt of the urban experience. All my work is about enjoyment, but I believe art should have a cultural edge."

Influenced by Cubism and bricolage, the early buildings had elements of surrealism embedded in their essential realism. The ones Johnson took out of the kiln this week are looser and more improvisational. A mask, a new element, fills one side of each structure. Whether naturalistic or based on African masks, each is a façade (the word has the same Latin root as face). The souls of past habitation, they "are about the human side of bricks and mortar."

The "new" neighborhood is Puerto Rican. Latino graffiti is "more involved and more beautiful" than other styles and the glazes are "colors I’ve seen in areas like Fifth and Lehigh." Johnson recently conducted a series of workshops in Israel. "The Palestinian quarter of Jerusalem suggests similar environments and certain colors and textures." Johnson was moved to tears at sacred sites in Jerusalem. He’s a "student of all religions," although "I consider organized religions products of man." Christ, in the wall-mounted crucifixes, "is a metaphor for the condition of lots of people in the world." These figures, like the angels and houses, are brilliant with layered glazes perfected through four or five firings, ending with gold lusters.

Like many Philadelphia artists, Johnson’s first art classes were at the Fleisher Art Memorial. But he also had a mysterious epiphany. "When I was eight or nine, I’d just finished reading [James Baldwin’s] Native Son. That was so incredible, I asked my mother who wrote it. She said, ‘A colored man wrote it and he lives in France.’ At that moment I heard a voice saying, ‘You’re going to be an artist.’"

He took a job with the Federal Government but continued to make art, concentrating on painting. At 22, excited by some huge pots in an issue of Craft Horizons, he returned to Fleisher to learn throwing.

In the ’60s, Johnson bought a house in North Philadelphia, put a wheel and kiln in the basement and went to work. In the late ’70s, he sold blue and gold "Asian" pots with sumi-style decoration at John Wanamaker and other shops. "I was ‘John LeRoy’ because ‘Leroy Johnson’ was too black."

Then his work took a more personal direction. "It became clear to me that my art career was going nowhere. I moved into my own space and looked at myself. I made a conscious decision that I was going to just shed like a musician. I suddenly understood what Picasso was doing. I started exploring African art."

"When I was 48, I was kicked out of my job in a private school. I was told that I had no credentials, so I got a master’s degree in Human Services at Lincoln University." Since then, he’s done a lot of teaching in addition to his own art.

Johnson is an eloquent culture critic, decrying commercialism, from "the hip-hop glorification of street culture: prostitution, drugs, gambling and prison" to Huggies to a "pet food diet" of fatty fast food "like they fed slaves." He says, "What most inner city kids get is so awful. The broad mass I’ve seen should be removed from the parents.… Even their clothing is so materialistic!" But he recognizes that parents, "bless their hearts," are victims, too.

He especially enjoys teaching the "babies," but often instructs "at-risk" teenage boys in throwing. "I show them a demo. Then I clean the wheel. I say, ‘Now you suffer on the wheel! All I want is that at the end of the day, you clean up. This is how men do it. Get to work!’"

Though the words may sound harsh, it’s clear that Johnson is a generous mentor. "Because I have such trouble with math, I ended up in art. But that’s also why I can work with children – because I’ve failed at something."

However, Johnson is far from failure today. While many of his friends are retiring and "don’t have the energy and vigor to run with the big dogs," in addition to his solo turn at the Clay Studio, he has a collage book work in the prestigious Beaver College Works On Paper (through Oct. 24, 450 S. Easton Rd., Glenside, 215-572-2900) and several houses in Gritty City: The Eloquence of Decay at the Borowsky Gallery (through Oct. 26, 401 S. Broad St., 215-446-3040).

"Leroy Johnson is a monster, but he’s a juried monster," he chuckles.