Blowing in the Wind
Angela Johnson / Justin Bitner
When coming up with what our installation would be – we walked the pathways at the Farley Center for ideas and inspiration. We also spent time thinking about life cycles, natures seasons, life seasons, passage of time and the wind, which is always weaving and moving through all of these. We wanted our piece to have a sense of movement and to show a passage of time.
Our installation Blowing in the Wind is made up of 18, nine foot long, cyanotype cotton panels that hang from a large tree where the individual pieces blow and move individually and collectively with the wind. Cyanotypes are a camera-less contact photo printing process that was discovered in the mid-1800’s. An image or objects are laid on top of pre-treated fabric or paper and glass is pressed down on top creating a contact print, and it is exposed by the sun. We collected a variety of natural materials sourced from the Farley Center including, flowers, leaves, branches to create the images on the fabric.
Keeping in mind the title of the exhibition Rooted in the Land and using natural materials from the land we think of our panels and installation as a blueprint (literally and figuratively). With the panels blowing in the wind and the non-permanence of everything, it is a reminder that we all go through life cycles.
Angela Johnson is an artist, educator and creativity coach living in Madison, WI. She earned both her MA in Art Education and MFA with a focus in photography from UW-Madison. Her work focuses on alternative processes in photography, installation and bookmaking. She has shown her work widely, participating in group exhibitions, including the Fort Worth Cultural Art Center, Ft. Worth, TX; Tilt Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ; Wichita Falls Museum of Art, Wichita Falls, TX, The Creole Creamery (part of Photo NOLA), New Orleans, LA; FotoFest in Houston, TX, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Angela has been a lecturer at UW-Madison in the Art Department, teaching both Intro to Darkroom and Intro to Digital Photography to undergraduate students. She has two decades of experience teaching in formal and informal learning environments, including elementary schools, museums, senior centers, colleges and universities.
Justin Bitner is an Artist/Craftsman residing in Madison, Wisconsin, where he attended UW Madison and earned his MFA. His work there involved creating environments based on sound and time, exploring spaces and human-made objects. The culmination of this body of work was an installation in MMoCA’s 2013 Triennial, which explored how “once humans are removed from objects, other forms of nature are revealed in their absence.”
He subsequently served as Artist in Residence at the Madison Public Library to create “Community Through Art.” He constructed a 50-foot-long pinewood derby track and invited local craftsmen to create “Art Cars.” While there, he held workshops for children to build cars from kits, themed on their favorite library books. Justin’s current work is installation-based. He pillages the nooks and cervices of various maker environments, investigating objects once used or created by others, most of which were deemed too beautiful to throw away. With this work he acts as an archeologist attempting to preserve and document the evolution of makers, craftsmen and society by rescuing objects from landfills or dusty cabinets and telling their stories on a gallery wall.
Justin worked as a furniture maker for Richard Judd Furniture Limited building bent laminated studio furniture. His personal contracts included building display tables for the Madison Public Library and an outdoor learning center for the Bayview Foundation. He has also contracted for the Madison Children’s Museum.