Faculty - Eric Johnson

Eric has been involved in photography since the 1960’s in high school. In the 1970‘s he explored 8”x10” work in the f.64 tradition, small camera journalistic work and street photography.  In the 1980's his work ranged from color landscapes in California titled Abandoned Highways to Scenes of the Pacific War, enamel spray on color prints using still framed video from WWII.  Earlier work was also included in the major survey by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art titled Photographs From The Last Decade in 1987. He moved to the digital environment in 1989 in order to execute the concept of "Videoglyphs." This work was included in exhibits including Digital Art at Purdue University; Currents in Electronic Imaging at Pacific Lutheran University and Digital Masters at Ansel Adams Gallery, San Francisco.  Earlier work was included in the national survey exhibit titled New Realities: Hand-Colored Photographs 1839 to the Present at the University of Wyoming Museum of Art and five other museums around the country.  In 2000-02 extensive photographic work on Ireland golf courses resulted in a collaborative book titled An Emerald Odyssey: In Search of the Gods of Golf and Ireland, published by Collins Press in 2008.

Since 2006 Eric has been involved in new digital still life work using personal, political and cultural references. This work resulted in a series of 24” x 36” archival pigment prints, located in appearance between photography, painting, and sculpture titled Shrines & Altars.  The series was shown at the Steynberg Gallery in San Luis Obispo in the fall of 2009 and was on display at the Artists Alley Gallery in San Francisco Summer 2011.

Recent series titled The Myth of Choice, explores a non-dualistic point of view using packaging materials in juxtaposition to various environments.

His work is in the permanent collections of The San Francisco Museum of Art, The Oakland Museum, The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, The St. Louis Museum of Art, The GTE Collection among others.

He also recently has presented and exhibited work he began in the 1970's printing the photographs of 20th-century composer Ernest Bloch. This work has been presented at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in 2009, The Oregon Jewish Museum in Portland in 2011 and the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco in 2012. He also produced You-Tube movies using Bloch's photographs and music and a book titled A Composer's Vision: The Photographs of Ernest Bloch.

BA. 1971 University of Oregon; MFA, Photography, University of New Mexico, 1978, researched, printed and wrote about the photography of 20th-century composer Ernest Bloch.  In 1980 The Friends of Photography published his landscapes of golf courses in New Landscapes. He taught photography at Western Washington University, 1978, and Ohio State University in Columbus, 1979. In 1980 he moved to California to join the faculty at California Polytechnic State University.

 

Eric Johnson