On Tuesday November 15th, the campus played host to artist Pamela Johnson. She spoke to a group of students about her life and her art, showing slides of 120 pieces of her artwork, which included paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and other work.
Johnson spoke primarily about the Chinese practice of bringing together images with text, and how she has combined poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s sonnnets about Orpheus and Eurydice in her own work. Johnson said that as she worked to try to picture Eurydice, she ultimately decided that Snow White was the perfect representation. Since then, Johnson has experimented with drawing Snow White as a geisha and as the “girl of milk and blood,” which is the name she is given in an Italian version of the fairy tale.
Johnson currently teaches at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where she has worked since 1999.
-Jack Hasler ‘15