We are delighted to present an exclusive sculpture exhibition featuring recent stone sculptures by California artist Rebecca Johnson.

In this body of work created during 2020, Rebecca Johnson continues to explore various rural building shapes carved from a hexagonal column of solid basalt, and stacked on sculpted contrasting stones. Johnson is best known for her large wall-based Barns, constructed from recycled barn wood and other materials and which appear both two and three-dimensional.

Creating fully three-dimensional stone barns that could return to the outdoors was a breakthrough for the California artist charmed by the barns she admired in various states of use and neglect. She would now invite the weather to interact with the completed sculptures, as it had created, over eons, the aspects of the stone that inspired her sculpting. By utilizing the various natural surfaces, such as the rich iron oxide patina “skin” of her basalt columns showcased in the roofs and outside walls of the barns, Johnson is able to contrast her sculptural interventions. And there, she also invites light to further enhance these contrasts.

Traces of human interaction are welcome in places: mill saw and drill marks, smooth sanding and heavy texturing. The windows and doors carved by Johnson invite the viewer into the stone’s interior. In these most recent works done during the isolation of “sheltering in place”, these small carved shelters took on an even more poignant signification. Johnson was compelled to add universally symbolic shapes, such as ladders, chairs and on one work, a Caryatide carved around the corner of the limestone base, lending the works a mystical quality.

As Johnson completed one sculpture after the other, she realized that she had built a village. Unable to connect with friends and family during the long spring and summer of 2020, she sheltered in her sculpture making.

Six new stone Barn sculptures, in addition to four other stone sculptures are included in this exclusive online exhibition. In spite of the social distancing restrictions and the extensive wildfires in Northern California, we were able to install two of these works at our SculptureWALK in Glen Ellen. Please let us know if you would like to see the other works at the artist’s studio.

For more info, please read the press release.

View the videos associated with this exhibition here.