His and Hers: Fire and Water
BY MARIE MABER Correspondent
Fire and water; clay and photography; hard form and pure illusion — as a pair, these connote art's continuum. Both of these art forms and several others will be on view at the Brookdale Community College CVA Gallery as the works of husband/ wife artists Erik Johanson and Sandy Johanson come together in their first joint retrospective.

"Nodes" by Erik Johanson

He wrestles with intangibles to create twisting, textured knots or smooth, tapering forms. She sees through pages of layered images to find mysterious pairings, extracting in each an essential duality.

Each finds solace in their creative zones — unencumbered by distractions. Although their works are displayed side by side in a complementary stasis, their thought processes and work patterns are distinctly dissimilar.

He said: "My attraction to creating art work is fundamentally the physical involvement with materials and processes. I love to work with my hands and derive great pleasure from hours spent focused on the challenge of actualizing an idea from raw materials.

"Entwined" by Erik Johanson

"The act of making something is pleasurable in itself. I value the exhaustion at the end of a work session, where I've pushed myself because I can't stop or don't want to. It's no longer a surprise to find that I've lost track of time while engaged in an activity so focused

as to exclude other concerns," he

wrote in a prepared statement.

She includes imagery and text involving people and places she's never known, having incorporated mementos and letters found at yard sales, her husband's ancestral archives and even on the street.

"I've found old negatives and have app ropriated memories. I've made stories out of

them," she said.

With regard to her photographs from 1997 when a pinhole camera and Polaroid 4x5 negatives were used, resulting in ephemeral plant-form images, some showing the remnants of motion, "You don't know what you're getting."

Her artwork then proceeds as a sorting process of discernment and decision.

She's photographed random images in the wake of disaster.

"La Primavera 2" by Sandy Johanson

"The post-9/11 images are an ominous body of work, photographed off the television and combined with other images," she said.

Like many of the opposites encountered in life, these are two extremes of the same entity. As one rides the spiral toward the center and the other tracks the opposite course, together they discover infinite possibilities.

Exhibition: "His and Hers"
Center for the Visual Arts Gallery
Brookdale Community College
765 Newman Springs Rd.
Lincroft (Middletown)
Use Parking Lots 1 or 2
Hours: 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday- Friday
Nov. 19 - Dec. 21

"Convent Thoughts" by Sandy Johanson