By: Roger Lewis (Art Critic for The Register, Santa Ana, California)
Publication: Art Voices, January/February 1981
Location: Laguna Beach, CA
The multi-colored, multi-positional sheet aluminum sculptures of Johanna Jordan accentuate her strong, idiosyncratic art of combination. A sculptor of geometric abstractions, Jordan creates compositions that afford a simultaneous perception of depth and plane with the added dimension of color. She is “intrigued with the edges and tensions at the meetings of curved and flat planes.”
Johanna Jordan has not always been a sculptor of abstract shapes. Her original efforts were conventional sculpted portraits done with expertise and intense feeling. Some of these are on shelves in her Laguna Beach studio. On the shelves, too, are examples of small polished-bronze abstractions and a “Gallo-esque” head, all reminders of her exploratory nature.
Not satisfied with the two-dimensional, Jordan began to work with three-dimensions for multi-faceted, multi-positional pieces. Her intense for color led her to experiment with the fusion of painting and sculpture.
Now she designs the product of her imagination and lets the shapes dictate the colors to be used. Once the colors have been decided upon, certain facets of the piece are covered with masking paper and tape and the paint is sprayed on in much the same manner as pant is sprayed on an automobile.
In explaining her work and her goals, Jordan says, “I am exploring the medium of sheet aluminum. It is a material that is malleable, yet rigid. These contradictory qualities result in restrictions that I respond to and find challenging. It can be cut and filed and bent, but it also has a memory, remaining shaped after manipulation into a specific curve. This has allowed me to construct complex, multi-planar forms with bent and flat planes expressing the contrast between opposites but resolving into curved edges. I am also exploring negative and positive space, by setting holes and voids in contrast with solid form. And finally, by painting the forms in hard—edged combinations of receding and advancing colors, I am exploring a third realm of contrast to intensify space and form. My hope is that these three elements should ultimately play in complementary counterpart.”
Jordan was an illustration and advertising major at Philadelphia College of Art, Pennsylvania. She studied painting with Tibor Jankay at the University of Redlands, California, and with Phil Paradise at the Riverside Museum of Art, California. Her sculpture study was with John Svensen at the Riverside Museum, her bronze casting with John Mason at Pomona College, Claremont, California, and acetylene and heliarc welding were learned at San Bernardino Valley College, California.
She has had solo exhibitions at numerous California galleries and has participated in competitive and invitational exhibits locally and nationally since 1962. She is a finalist in the 1980 National Sculpture Competition at Robeson Gallery, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey. Her sculpture was shown in scenes of the movie “Mame,” and seven of her works were featured in scenes with George Segal in “Terminal Man,” both Warner Brothers’ Studio films.
Her awards include the Laguna Beach Museum of Art Panorama 70, the Long Beach Art Association Annual, and the Downey Museum of Art Eleventh Art Unlimited. Her works are included in collections throughout the United States, and Milan, Italy.
Johanna Jordan is currently represented by Abraxas Gallery in Newport Beach, California, and by Rubicon Gallery, Los Altos, California.