Bethany Johnson
Field Notes
October 25 – November 26, 2014
Reception for the artist Saturday, October 25, 6-8 PM
Moody Gallery is pleased to announce Bethany Johnsonʼs second solo exhibition at the gallery.
The show, entitled Field Notes presents a selection of new drawings that reference the careful
study of natural sciences. Johnson methodically draws tight parallel lines with fine technical pens
in several different colored inks. Each work is drawn line by line and the resulting textures evoke
a variety of historical referents, from antique engravings and cartography through early computer
graphics, television monitors and contemporary printing technologies. The drawings in Field
Notes reflect the artistʼs impulse to collect and preserve information about the complex natural
world.
Bethany states that the works “refer to air, water, ice, gravity, space, terrestrial and extraterrestrial
landscapes, and their corresponding scientific study. The even, measured handling of the images
acts as an equalizing and abstracting filter: scientific, informational imagery is newly imbued with
the intimacy of the lovingly hand-drawn, while otherwise mundane-looking snapshots are injected
with abstract, associative importance.”
Bethany Johnson was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1985 and currently lives and works in Austin,
Texas. She received her BA in studio art from the Kalamazoo College in Michigan in 2007 and
MFA in Painting at The University of Texas at Austin in 2011. Her work was exhibited in a solo
show entitled Forces, the Will & the Weather at The McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas,
Texas in 2013 as well as Shape Shifting: New Methods of Drawings in 2012, a two-person
exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art / Art House, now The Contemporary Austin. She has also
exhibited at King Street Gallery, Silver Street, Maryland, the Galveston Art Center, and the
Creative Research Laboratory. Johnson is the 2011 recipient of the Art League of Austin
Scholarship, and has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Denkmalschmiede Höfgen
in Germany, and the Soaring Gardens Artist Retreat.
Field Notes is on view at Moody Gallery from Saturday, October 25 through Wednesday,
November 26, 2014. An opening reception for the artist will be held Saturday, October 25 from
6:00 to 8:00 pm.
