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"The gathering together of this art work, that spans many years serves as a constant reminder that the quest for knowledge and truth is a journey. The search for the promise takes a lifetime.Australian aboriginal and African primal cultures fuel this body of current work with a high heritage of surface textures, pulsating colors, and intellectual energy . . . and papermaking provides a flexible medium of expression for both the familiar and the unfamiliar image."Lester Johnson |
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"Lester Johnson of Detroit, excels in his pursuit of achieving maximum visual effects with minimal means and a deceptively simple concept. In one of his works, tiny cone-shaped wads of colorfully patterned fabric protrude evenly from the surface of a small piece of peg-board painted white. These protrusions of fabric cast shadows that read like gray brush strokes on the white support."Christopher
R. Young
"This is a show of reflection. The fine craftsmanship of the work reflects the artist's talent and skill; the subjects reflect Afro-American culture; and perhaps most importantly, the pieces reflect an awareness of places and cultures beyond our own."Martha
Lattie
"The brilliant colors set off by black belong to Lester Johnson and nobody else."Joy
Hakanson Colby
"If Johnson were a musician he would never have played Wings Stadium, but he might well have jammed with Coltrane."Mark Maher
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"Collage has been the bedrock of 20th century abstraction. Collaging fugitive materials and abstraction places Lester on the cutting edge of those questions confronting the 21st century."Al Loving
"He stands firm with self control. One exhilirating feature about him is his expressive eyes, set in pensive thought, yet radiating a creativity which only his fingers can capture on canvas."Gerri
Johnson
"Johnson is an exuberant and lyrical colorist. His abstract use of colors and constant reliance on music invokes Wassily Kandinsky's poetic artist's statement of 1911: Generally speaking, color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposely, to cause vibration in the soul."Christopher
R. Young
". . . but the man with his hands on the art pulse, the ethnic pulse, at the moment, is Lester Johnson. His sculpture made of poles wrapped with fiber and raffia and hung loosely from the ceiling are totems befitting a tribal prince."Marsha
Miro
"Lester Johnson of Detroit, who had a glorious one-person exhibit at GFAC (Greater Flint Arts Council) in December, is a consummate serious artist with nary a peer in this exhibit. A significantly gifted talent, Johnson has through the pressure of years of hard work, refined his art to the highest level"Christopher
R. Young
"Lester's tubular totems are certainly beautiful. They are also somewhat mysterious. . ."Gilbert B.
Silverman
"Johnson's sculptural, mixed media works are geometrically precise, made with abstract collage elements that knit together past and present cultures with dazzling color. Often reflecting the vibrations of the universe, his works emerge as spontaneous, richly detailed creations that are as touchingly individual as they are profound.His body of work spans several decades, and largely pays homage to the artistry of contemporary jazz musicians . . . most notably the late Miles Davis. Reflecting the sound of sophisticated jazz, Johnson's work shifts between tones and design, using the bold semantics of color to mimic the sound of instruments interacting, locking and unlocking in an exchange of ideas.Uncompromisingly independent, Johnson has spent much of his creative life in confident isolation. His African and Native American spiritual heritage has attuned him to creating powerful, grand scale totems that are brilliantly colored and high-spirited . . . making for a crosscultural exchange of energy and vision."Sakkara
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