Octopus Initiative Artist Tsehai Johnson
Tsehai Johnson’s work explores the boundaries between public and private life. Her performative events, mixed-media wall pieces, and interactive installations encourage reflection on the tension between order and function as expressed through the objects that populate our lives. Driving this inquiry are several converging interests, from the clash between fantasy’s perfection and the messiness of reality, to the close juxtaposition of labor and pleasure in domestic space. She employs dense ornamentation to explore quotidian realities of human existence and to comment on the blending of familiarity with a larger social function.
Johnson, a Denver-based artist, was born in Ethiopia in 1966. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Reed College in 1989, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art in 1993, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado in 1999. Her work has been shown at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Plus Gallery, Denver Art Museum, Biennale Internationale de Vallauris, White Columns (New York), and the World Ceramic Biennale (Icheon, Korea) and is in the collections of the Museum of Ceramics (New York), Museum of Outdoor Arts (Englewood, Colorado), and the Reyzjanesbaer Art Museum (Reyzjanesbaer, Iceland). She is the recipient of a Colorado Council of the Arts Fellowship and residencies in the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Iceland, and at Platteforum in Denver. In 2013, Johnson completed an Art in Architecture Commission for the Byron Rogers Federal Building in Denver. Johnson is a Professor in the Art Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
