About the Artwork/Artist
Building Cultural Humility: Practices & Approaches
The artwork selected to promote the conference is titled Building Cultural Humility, and was created by mixed media artist Lance Johnson. This piece symbolizes the dreams that live in the hearts and minds of young people who dwell in urban environments. Too often they are seen as a monolith but there is a diversity of hopes and dreams, trials and tribulations that often go overlooked or misunderstood. This is a piece that serves as a reminder that with work and belief…all dreams are possible!
Lance Johnson’s Bio
Think…create…inspire. That’s the motto mixed media artist Lance Johnson brings to every piece he creates. He sets out to create pieces that celebrate the beauty that thrives in urban settings. At an early age, Johnson was seduced by the process of creating something vibrant and thought provoking to share with the world. He has set out to not only celebrate the legacy of his African American heritage but add to it. When Johnson was about 14 years old, his mother showed him a video tape of a documentary that would expose him to the rich legacy of African American art. He was particularly struck by the bold and vibrant artworks of collage artist Romare Bearden. It had a profound effect on him. Collage became his medium of choice because like jazz music, it allowed improvisation and the juxtaposition of unlikely parts combined to create familiar images. It fostered in him, the idea of combining random images and creating stories from the parts. Like, hip hop, Johnson’s favorite mode of music, his work grabs from the past to decorate the present.
Johnson has exhibited his art in various art shows throughout the boroughs of NYC as well as in South Carolina and Boston.
