Artist honors the souls of her coal-mining community
Photo by Clay Nations Photography
Much of the work of Bakersville artist Lori Brook Johnson is about the adverse multigenerational impact of exploitive labor practices — a subject she knows all too well. “I am a West Virginia coal-miner’s daughter,” says Johnson, “and that almost sounds clichéd, but it’s true, and I’m proud of coal miners. But labor that exploits you changes who you are and how you relate to your family.
“My grandfather died of black lung,” she reveals. “Picket lines can be violent. People were always getting laid off, and we were not able to get out from under the company store. There’s no way we weren’t impacted by that. At the same time, I’m also gratefully impacted by the strong decisions my mother made for me and my sister.”
Johnson is quick to push back against prejudicial stereotypes. “I want the power to speak for myself, and when it comes to my community, I want to listen and not define. People want to share their own individual experiences that aren’t just about poverty and mining. No one is innately poor; instead a powerful industry comes along and exploits. You have to find who you are as an individual within all that, so you’re not a cliché.
“I have this particular experience that shaped me, and I’m drawing my way through it. The way I think is by putting pencil to paper and working out things.”
Sometimes when a subject is too painful, Johnson finds that abstraction soothes by providing distance. She has looked at photos of horses or mules that never saw the light of day because they were always in the mines, and has recomposed them. “Some things I draw come from something very specific, like seeing a neglected horse and how that haunts me. I know I can’t fix what happened to that animal. But what if I can pretend, by making my drawing about the soft texture of its mane, caring for the animal, and trying to be loving? Maybe that will heal the memory within me. Maybe I’ll show something devastating in a drawing, but try to bring the humanity out of that. Hilton Als writes about ‘twinship’ — seeing yourself in another who is the same as you but different.
“I look for those moments to see myself in others, recognize our humanity, and bring out that connection.”
Johnson also makes and shares connections as the Teaching Artist for the Community Collaborations Department at Penland School of Craft. “We work alongside communities, learning from and with one another through art. It’s a wonderful and meaningful collaboration with our neighbors. Everyone at any level can have some sort of art process, whether it’s journaling and drawing, creating designs, a memoir, or looking at the moon and drawing it. It doesn’t have to look a certain way, either — it’s just part of how you process your world, and it can be a practice that adds to the quality of your life.”
Johnson’s paying it forward, especially grateful for encouragement she received from an art teacher when she was in her late teens. “When I was 17, I got married to a Marine, but still finished high school. Then we moved from West Virginia to Hawaii, because he was always deployed. I’d never been on a plane, didn’t have a driver’s license or know how to drive a car, and got a job as a dishwasher. My husband was gone, and I was alone and homesick. So, I thought, ‘I like art, maybe I’ll take a class as a distraction.’ There was a really good, cheap community college and the teacher made us draw a self-portrait. Then he pulled me aside and told me it was really good. I couldn’t believe it.”
Along the way, some others were not so perceptive, or kind. “I’ve had teachers who had certain privileges of life that I didn’t have who just ripped into my art and said things to me like, ‘No one cares about your personal story, Lori.’
“But I [still] wanted to do it, even if it was flawed.”
So she persisted, graduating cum laude with Distinction in Art from UNC-Asheville, earning an MFA at Clemson University, winning numerous grants, and appearing in dozens of solo and prestigious group shows, regionally and nationally. Her evocative work — categorized as “Grief Drawings,” “Labor Drawings,” and “Drawing in Appalachia” — conveys an authentic, poignant beauty and aesthetic sensitivity.
“My work has always come from a very personal and emotional space.”
Lori Brook Johnson, Bakersville. Find Johnson’s work at Treats Studio (216 Oak Ave., Spruce Pine, treatsstudios.org) and at Penland Gallery at Penland School of Craft (3135 Conley Ridge Road, Penland, penland.org). Also see loribrookjohnson.com and @loribrookjohnson on Instagram.
It’s been my pleasure to see Lori’s art grow and I’m grateful that she’s getting continually recognized as the great artist that she is. Well done, my friend.