The Inspired Artistic Footprint of Ann ‘Sole Sister’ Johnson

by D. Amari Jackson

The innovators. The ones who see things differently. The rare few who disrupt the traditional and the mundane in breathtaking ways and, in doing so, challenge the long-established cultural practices surrounding them, before reimagining them, transforming them into something compelling and “new,” despite being there all along, hidden in plain sight, yet waiting to be rediscovered by one bold enough to look at the same old thing in a whole new way.

For Ann ‘Sole Sister’ Johnson, such innovation was right at her feet. Three decades ago, while taking art courses at a Texas junior college, she stumbled across her artistic trademark. “I took a painting class and that’s when I stepped in some paint,” says Johnson, a mixed-media artist based in the Houston area. Though artistic throughout her early years, “that was when I started painting with my feet,” she notes. “And that’s where the ‘Sole Sister’ name comes from.”

PLANTATION LULLABY, 2019
Intaglio, Found Objects
6×18”

“I thought it looked cool,” continues Johnson, who proceeded to paint her first self-portrait with her feet. “I just kept playing around with it and started painting on different surfaces like wood, which is different from painting on canvas,” she explains. “Then I just focused on it so I could master where to put footprints and how to go back in and detail with my fingers around the eyes so that it could be less raw and more refined.”

Rare talent acknowledged, Johnson’s numerous professional feats go beyond just her feet. The hands-on painter, sculptor, and printmaker has been showcased in solo, group, and juried exhibitions in major museums and galleries throughout the country. Johnson’s work, which largely examines issues relevant to Black life and representation, has garnered awards from the likes of Houston’s “The Big Show,” the Carroll Harris Simms National Black Art Competition, and the Texas Biennial. Pegged an “Artist to Watch” by the International Review of African American Art for her experimental printmaking, Johnson has also published articles for art magazines and penned and designed several books. Since 1995, she has taught art, merchandising, and design at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University, a historically Black land-grant university and the second oldest public institution of higher learning in the state. The popular professor has been recognized with a Teaching Excellence Award, a Presidents Faculty of the Year award, and an Art Teacher of the Year award from the university’s School of Architecture.

BONDED, 2019
Intaglio on Sycamore Leaf
6×8”

“Ann is an amazing educator,” offers colleague, professor, and artist, Rabéa Ballin. “She always puts her students first, and she does so much for them, almost like a mother figure. She just has a nurturing aspect to her personality that, I feel, is infused in the work she makes, because it is so labor intensive.” In artistic terms, continues Ballin, “Ann is always cooking something up with the printmaking and her commitment to process, and it speaks to the organized and very thorough nature of her personality. A lot of her work is conceptual, so it is based on a lot of research, and I really want to speak to and honor her thoroughness when it comes to the work she makes.”

Like her talented toes, Johnson has forged a remarkable trail, one stretching across the Atlantic, back to London, England where she was born into a military family that, at age three, jumped the pond to settle in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Heavily influenced by her mother, an oil painter and avid gardener, and further shaped by an activist, military father who championed the effort to make Martin Luther King day a holiday in Wyoming, Johnson absorbed her parents’ penchant for creativity and social justice while figuring out her own path in life. She initially pursued fashion instead of art, attending Bauder Fashion College in Arlington, TX, largely because she believed she couldn’t measure up with the latter.

“I never thought I was good enough to major in art,” reveals Johnson, before describing how the rodeo was a “big deal” in Wyoming. In art competitions, “the kids would be drawing boots and cows while I’m drawing Tina Turner and Prince,” she recalls, with a laugh. “So I would never place.” It wasn’t until Johnson attended Prairie View A&M that she recognized art as her true talent and found a mentor and a collegiate environment more conducive to her skills. “Art was always my passion,” she clarifies. “I just was afraid of it.”

Upon graduating from college in 1991, Johnson pursued and received an MA in Humanities from the University of Houston-Clear Lake with a concentration in art. She began teaching art at her collegiate alma mater, simultaneously exhibiting and engaging her Houston-area community in such initiatives as public mural projects with the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and art-based summer programs for children. For eight years, under Project Row Houses, Johnson taught arts and crafts to youth each summer while establishing the African American Art Festival Children’s Village. In 2002, she launched RAW Kids Mobile Art Camps to further serve her Houston community before pursuing and receiving her MFA from The Academy of Art University in San Francisco with a concentration in printmaking.

Such community engagement and service are wholly consistent with Johnson’s identification with the “artivist” tag. She is primarily focused on activism and printmaking these days, given her last foot-felt portrait of a newly elected President Obama was rendered in 2009.

OCTOROON …from the auction block series 2021
Intaglio, on Raw Cotton, Transfer Print, Fabric, Found Objects
10x10x6”

“I always say that everybody ain’t built for the streets,” stresses Johnson, noting that a wise person “once told me to use your art as your activism.” She references ongoing police killings of unarmed Black citizens and the July 2015 death of Sandra Bland, the 28-year-old African American woman found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas three days after being arrested during a traffic stop. “That’s my backyard,” reports Johnson. “That was my campus where that happened, and I just can’t begin to tell you what it feels like to drive down a street you’ve been driving down for 20 years, but now you’re a nervous wreck, and your hands are shaking driving down that same street. So, obviously, it’s gonna have an impact, either consciously or unconsciously, on the work that’s created.”

Accordingly, Johnson produced a series of artistic sunglasses called You Can’t See What I Can See, in response to the decisions to not charge law enforcement officials for these killings. The first pair of sunglasses, a transfer print of a mother grieving her son, was titled, “It Just Keeps Happening.” In the aftermath of Bland’s death, Johnson curated an exhibition focused on women and brutality called How Do I Say Her Name.

Johnson is also an active member of ROUX, a southern artist collective that contributes to the discourse of contemporary printmaking through the employment of both traditional and experimental methods. Composed of Johnson, Rabéa Ballin, Delita Martin, and Lovie Olivia, the ROUX collective promotes diverse works that navigate between styles of the past and the proposed future while addressing issues of representation and experiences unique to women of color in the American South.

STOP ERASING MY EXISITENCE …from the auction block series 2021
Intaglio, on Raw Cotton, Transfer Print, Fabric, Found Objects
10x10x6”

But for all her ongoing artivism, it is ultimately her 84-year-old mother, Thelma, who keeps Johnson on her toes. “She’s every woman,” laughs Johnson, pointing to her mother’s numerous skills including art, gardening, making clothes and hats. “I have always been inspired by her artistically,” Johnson told the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Institute in a January 2021 talk. “A couple of years ago, at the Community Artists’ Collective, she and I had a show together, and it was great.”

“But she was coming for me.”

Browse and shop for fine art from our growing network of artists, collectors, estates, galleries — specializing in works by Black American artists with great values on premier art.

START COLLECTING ART

Sign up for our free email course on how to begin your collection.

Amari Jackson is a creator, author, TV/web/film producer, and award-winning journalist. He is author of the 2011 novel, The Savion Sequence; creator/writer/coproducer of the 2012-2014 web series The Book Look; writer/coproducer of the 2016 film Edge of the Pier; and current writer/coproducer of Listen Up! on HBCU GO/Roku TV. He is a former Chief of Staff for a NJ State Senator; a former VP of Communications & Development for the Jamestown Project at Harvard University; and a recipient of several writing fellowships including the George Washington Williams Fellowship from the Independent Press Association. An active ghost writer, song writer, martial artist, and journalist, his writings have appeared in a wide variety of national and regional publications.

Would you buy stock in BAIA if you could? Well we invite you to join us in becoming a monthly supporter, starting at just $3 a month YOU become a stakeholder and begin to help us transform lives through art. We are growing the BAIA team and will use your contributions to hire more team members for the purpose of creating more educational and marketing resources for schools and universities about african american artists both past and present. Such art initiatives and educational programming like Blacklite with Steve Prince, Relating to Art with Dr. Kelli Morgan, and BAIA BITS would not be possible without the ongoing support of our Patreon members. Please consider becoming a monthly Patreon member today!

Review our list of rewards for becoming a BAIA Patreon / patron supporter. Your monthly contribution has lasting benefits. — “What will your legacy be” – Dr. Margaret Burroughs

Thank you new and recurring monthly Patrons

Deloris and Eddie Young, Esther Silver-Parker, Eugene Foney, Zadig & Voltaire, Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, John and Melanie Guess, Frank Frazier, Houston Museum of African American Culture, Leslie Fields, Jim Nixon, Dr. Michael Butler, Mary “Madea” Jones, Patrick Stewart, Noreen Winningham, Reg Pugh, Kevin Smokler, Deborah R. Moore, Dr. Skyller Walkes, Jae M, Jocelyne Lamour, Marion Zweig, Shannon DeVaney, Ashlee Jacob, DaNia Childress, Rev. Anita Marshall, Mary Ali-Masai, Devera Redmond, Roslyn Valentine, Robin King, Brenda Larnell, Michael, Jeffery Washington, Tricia Konan, Debra L Lacy CHARLES BIBBS, Fredric Isler, Silvia Peters,  Harold Moore, Shurvon Haynes K.Coleman Shannon Dale Davis Terese L Hawkins M. Rasheed Jamal Love Annette, Mason Archie, Manuelita Brown, Carolyn L. Mazloomi  Gale Ross KL Martin michael jacobs Virginia Joy Simmons Christ Van Loan Sr. Cecilia Winters-Morris, Rosie Gordon-Wallace, Pearlie Taylor, Danny Jenkins, Sara, Lloyd Goode, Marina Kovic, Sarah Rooney, Mitchell Shohet, Nicole Farley, Cheryl B Blankman, Jocelyn Greene, Laura Di Piazza Petrina Burkard Hannah Diener Sarah Drury Claire Sig Mina Silva Whitney, Sara Friesen, Megan LaCroix, Kellyn Maguire, Sophia Bellin,o Cory Huff, Wilhelmina Barker, Linda Eaddy, Shelley Danzy, Rosalyn D. Elder, Sonia Spencer Karen Pinzolo Desiree Dansan, Deborah Paige-Jackson, ALKEBU LAN IMAGES Bookstore DeLores M Dyer, Shelia, Harry F Banks, Susan Ross, Dr. Diane R. Miles, Carlton Cotton, Andre Mitchell, Joan L. Ward, JOCELYN BENITA SMITH, Paul Robinson, Janice Orr, Patricia D Dungy, Ethnie Weekes, Shawn Rhea, Duke Windsor, Runez M Bender, Karen Y House, M Belinda Tucker, Dr. Yonette Thomas, Diana Shannon Young, Judith Hamilton, Julia Turner Lowe, Francene Greene, Caryliss R. Weaver, Sharmon Jane Hilfinger, Bill and Deborah Nix, joyce a, Wanda Baker-Smith, Timothy Gandley, Anneke Schwob, Emily M, Rachael horner, Morris Howard, Marie L Johnson, Ayoka Chenzira, Jean Gumpper, Caitlin Charles, Becca H,. Dr. Darlene White, Dr. Sandra Boyce Broomes, Michele C. Mayes, Rita Crittenden, Reginald Laurent, Jea Delsarte, Brenda Brooks, Suzette Renwick, BEVERLY GRANT, Linda B. Smith, Judith Bergeron, Emily Hegeman Cavanagh, Teri L Lewis, Cooky Goldblatt, Danni Cerezo, Hollis Turner, cdixon06, Freda Davis, Sarah Caputo, jacki rust, Curtis Morrow, Christina Levine, Jessica Beckstrom, Kim Walker, Pamela Hart, Ted Ellis, Louise berner-holmberg, Carla Sonheim, Nicole Bruce, Alison Deas, Monikapi, Ashley Littlefield, Reginald Browne Bill Cook, SylviaWong Lewis, DONNA PAXTON, Kanika Marshall, Cheyenne, Nancy Maignan, Kimberly Smith, Tracy Russ, Gwen Meharg, K Joy Peters, johnnie mae maberry, Lester Marks, Zishan Evans, Anne king, Dianna A. Harris, Arbrie Griffin Bradley, Sandra Sautner, Barbara Brown, Bronwen Hodgkinson, Sonia Deane, January Hoskin, Quinton Foreman, Key Mosley, Jim Alexander, Terri Pease, Annette Groschke, Richard MacMillan, D T Ray, Camille, Elayne Gross, Ann Tankersley, Samori Augusto, Karen M Hirsch, Jeanne H Chaney, Jacqueline Konan, Jerome Moore, Patricia Andrews-Keenan, India Still, Luna Cascade, Amy Peck, Marnese Barksdale, Elder Bridgette, René McCullough, Kevin and Tracy Burton, Raven Burnes, Kim Dubois, Edwina King Diva E, Charlotte Bender, Phyllis Stephens, Alisa R Elliot, Ebony English, Otto Neals, Michael Nix, Terri Bowles, Nelly Maynard, Leslie Smith, Bernard W. Kinsey, Toby Sisson, Raynard Hall, Milton Loupe, Wren Mckinley, Arturo Lindsay, Lindiwe Stovall Lester, Phil, Ricki Carroll,   Sherman E Jackson Jr, Janine P Rouson, Raynard Hall, Vickie Townsend-Carter, Peter Prinz, PB Fine Art Appraisal, Alison Woods, Suzette Davis, Carlton Cotton, Art Now After Hours, Diane E Leifheit, Tamara clements,  lisa tomlinson, vince leal, Deborah BarnwellGarr, Sonia Pollard, Barbara Hayes, Loretta Y Blakely, Gregg Y, Paige Jernigan, Randy McAnulty, raven walthor, Will Johnson, jack, Shameika Ingram, Trina Virginia Brooks, Black Wall Street Gallery, Suzanne Roberts, Faye Edwards, Tara, Crystal Green, Sedonia Phillips Kniskern,  R Simpson, Kate Gadd, Judy Nyquist, Velma McLaurin-Bell, Frazier and Myra O’Leary, Rosemarie Rogers, Elaine Buchsbaum, Hope Elliott, Renee Williams Jefferson, Atiya Slaughter, Stephanie Stephens, Takisia Whites, Robert Taylor, Christina, Taylor Jackson, Brenda Joyner, Dr. Karen Patricia Williams, Paul Daniel Curtis, Zawadi, DJIBRIL N’DOYE, Monique Johnson, Christine J Vincent, Paige Jernigan, Willa Bandler, Valerie A. Cooper, Cordell Boyd, DARRIS L SHAW, Shurvon Haynes, S J, Cynthia Hargrove, THERESA PATTERSON, Kree8tive DJ, LaShanda Chirunga, Anita Askew Wharton, Paula deJoie, Cyderia Gates, Patricia S. Kearse, Eunice Sykes, Sharyn Welch, Chris McNew, Rita Alston, Rebecca Smith, Patricia Goodwin, Mikal Aziz, Rayhart, Patric McCoy, Esmond Adams, Shakira Pollard, Arelia Jones, Vernestine Laughinghouse, Bridget Griffin

We Appreciate Your Support