At 70, Long Beach man finds a second life

BY SHERRI CRUZ
2014-06-09 20:04:42
Stephen Steve Johnson is one of the few students whose grandkids
attended their college graduation this spring.
With his masters degree in fine arts from Cal State Fullerton, the 70-
year-old retired psychiatric social worker, who has two grown children
with kids of their own, is ready for a new adventure as a mixed-
material sculptor.
He aims to join an art collective in Long Beach, where he lives. Thats
one of my tasks for myself to investigate the Long Beach art
collectives, he said. I enjoy working with other people.
Johnsons sculptures are made of leftover pieces of materials such as wood and pottery shards. He likes to
think of them as remnants of memory, pieces that have history. All of his work is about memory what we
remember as individuals and as a society.
His interest in memory stems from his childhood. He was about 8 when his mother drowned.
Its this gap. I really have no memories of her. The way our family dealt with it was they just turned the
page. They didnt tell stories. I could see how important stories are, he said.
Its an absence of those memories that got me thinking of memory.
He uses images of his mother in his works.
His sculptures have evolved into thinking about memories on a societal scale. A couple of pieces he did on
Syria explore how, as a society, our attention flits from one problem to the next without solving problems.
Do we, as a society, get bored? Do we become so saturated with negative news that we lose interest?
Thats what I would like to explore more, Johnson said.
Hes drawn a conclusion from his work thus far: Memory is selective.
Lest you think Johnson might be old enough to be losing his own memory, he says hes not.
I experience what I believe to be normal amounts of memory loss, he said. I want to keep it that way.
Johnson appears fit and doesnt look his age.
Ive been very fortunate thus far not to have major health problems, he said. But he does try to do things
to keep a sound mind and body. Hes been a triathlete for 15 years.
His inspiration to get into art happened during a trip to the San Juan Islands, where he visited an art studio
of a kinetic sculptor.
Prior to that, he hadnt done any art, though as a kid raised on a ranch he did build things out of wood.
When I hit 60, I decided if I was going to do anything, I had better get with it.
Upon retiring in 2003, Johnson began taking a full load of classes at Long Beach City College. He had no
particular aim of earning a degree, only to learn the basics of painting and drawing.
Once he got comfortable at community college, he transferred to Cal State Fullerton in 2007 and was
admitted into the masters program in 2010. It was a big leap. He earned his masters in social work
decades ago.
One of the things he enjoyed at Cal State Fullerton was taking classes outside of the arts program. He took
philosophy, English and history. They were many of the same classes that he took for his bachelors
degree in Latin-American history that he earned in 1965.
Those classes allowed him to catch up intellectually and unit-wise.
It helped me better understand what had gone on in the last 40 years. I had been focused on mental
health and treatment.
In the masters program, students create about two to three pieces of work each semester. The work is
critiqued and the capstone project is a showing at a gallery, something the student has to organize, from
booking the gallery to hosting the reception.
Johnson had about 60 to 70 classmates, family and friends attend his reception. Following the reception,
students sit the gallery for a few hours the following week. Instructors bring their classes through and they
discuss your work, Johnson said.
Its kind of rare to have someone Steves age, said Jim Jenkins, art professor and program coordinator at
Cal State Fullerton. But Johnsons work got the same amount of scrutiny as any other student in the
program, he said.
He did great, Jenkins said. Johnson got along well with his classmates. Hes easy going and personable.
He was always very thoughtful, never mean or snide, Jenkins said.
MFA alumni teach art, work in design and sculpture for Hollywood, work in galleries or, like Johnson,
create art to exhibit or sell, Jenkins said.
Johnson makes his art at his home workshop, where he has a lifetime collection of tools hanging on the
wall. He also has his memories hanging up, such as black and white photos of him and his wife and their
young children. The studio is open and looks out to his pool.
He displays his art in the small, upstairs apartment on his property.
One of his wood sculptures is a person-sized tunnel with an opening that beckons the observer to step in.
When you look down, the black Plexiglas bottom gives the illusion of falling down a well. When his son first
saw the piece, which Johnson calls the Excavation of Memory, he thought his father had drilled a hole
through the floor.
Johnson gets the wood pieces from Los Angeles-based furniture manufacturers. The workers point him to
the bins of wood scraps. His wife has urged him to show his photos of his finished sculptures to the
woodworkers at the plants where he gathers the wood.
I will do that, he said. As woodworkers, they might appreciate the art that has been created from the
discarded pieces, he said.
The hunt for pieces is part of the fun for Johnson. The wood sections are of all different sizes and have
many imperfections, which is likely why they were discarded. Some have aimless nails and someone
figured out a math problem on one of the pieces. He doesnt alter the individual chunks of wood in any
way.
Johnsons pieces become more interesting when you take a closer look. In between the wood pieces of the
excavation piece are black and white images, which represent memories or things Johnson thinks about.
Thats why I like used objects. They come with a history of something else what they were.
Another sculpture is made of pieces of wood that form to shape an eye, backed by a Plexiglas piece that
has a photo of his eye on it.
After finishing his last semester, Johnson and his wife took off backpacking for nine weeks in South
America. They stayed in hostels in Brazil, Chile and Argentina.
We like hostels because youre cooking together. You sit down and youre sharing stories with other
travelers, he said. You get to interact with other people, just talk with people from all over the world.
Its just a very enriching experience.
He recommends younger students jump at the chance to travel abroad if they can.
It gives you a completely different perspective in the world, Johnson said. Here, were immersed in our
own culture and looking out. Its a much different experience to be outside looking in.
He and his wife, married in 1966, did community development work in Venezuela after Johnson obtained
his undergraduate degree. Venezuela had gone through rapid industrialization at the time and more people
crowded the cities, which left public services overwhelmed, he said. His group did things such as
organizing mens and womens clubs and putting in a water system.
I always felt we did some good down there. But also, as an American kid in my 20s, I learned so much
living in foreign country and getting a view from outside the United States, he said.
He wife taught English there. She retired in 2008 from teaching English as a second language to adults.
She discovered her passion for plant cultivation and is now attending Long Beach City College for a
certificate in horticulture, Johnson said.
Shes my greatest supporter and one of my best critics. She lets him know whats working and whats not.
She has a good eye, he said.
With school done, Johnson aims to begin working regularly on his art this summer. He plans to do
research and reading related to his art in the mornings and then work in his studio in the afternoons.
Im going to have to find a way to give myself deadlines, he said. Thats why I want to work at a
collective.
People are obligated to periodically put on a show, he said.
If theres a possibility of a show about a year from now, that will be a good impetus for me to get working.
Contact the writer: scruz@ocregister.com
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