About Me

Hi there! My name is Jeffrey Johnson, and I’m an illustrator, storyteller, and assistant professor of graphic design at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. Much of my work these days involves thinking through, writing about, and designing presentations about a philosophy surrounding the process and principles of visual art & design. I know that this work is in many ways treading over well-worn paths. What I end up discovering–more often than not–is akin to that experience of coming around a curve in a familiar street and recognizing a building as new, even though it’s been there every other time I’ve passed through. I’m literally seeing it in a new light. Pretty neat, huh?

I’ve been making runs at restarting–fresh starting? –this blog for a long time and keep stalling. The internet is full of earnest people talking about things they love. Many of them are experts, and many of them are “just some dude”. My master’s degree poised me to be one of the experts, while leaving me keenly aware that there’s so many things I don’t know in spite of my credentials. What’s easy for me to forget is that research–literally RE-search–is a process of exploring the things that excite me, making mistakes, and adjusting. I used my time in graduate school to consider my position as an artist, researcher, and teacher. I love process, making connections and building community. Modeling those priorities is what excites me.

When I was in highschool, I wanted to be a Muppet when I grew up.

As a child of the 80’s, my world was steeped in fairytales and developing media. Animation was my introduction to visual culture and has since informed my stance on making things, image crafting, and storytelling. As with the Punch and Judy plays of Edwardian England, and the animal stories of Brittany and ancient Greece, the medium of animation allows us to explore themes that would be uncomfortable, uncredible or even traumatic if they weren’t distanced from reality.   

That childhood blend of cartoons and unstructured–often unsupervised–free time helped me develop a healthy relationship with boredom. I spent a lot of time waiting. I spent a lot of time ending up in places I shouldn’t be, like on the roof or my dad’s–my dad the pastor’s–church, or under the fence and across the highway playing Super Mario Bros on an arcade machine at the 7-11. My inner narrator would make companions for me of hobbits and harpers and hackers. I learned how to find answers and forgot how to ask questions.  I would search and then search again, making connections along the way. By the time I graduated from high school, I had read more books than anyone I knew, had nearly the worst grades in my class, and I knew I wanted to make things when I grew up.

In 2014, I was writing and illustrating an autobiographical comic called Life With Girls, which began as a way to explore digital illustration without having to look for subjects every time I sat down. This was a bookmark promo piece for the comic.

I received my Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Central Missouri with an emphasis in printmaking. I came to the field in that interstitial time where visual artists and designers were still trained almost entirely in analog processes but were also still really excited about technological shifts. It was easy in the year two thousand, to envision a world where data and reality would essentially be the same thing. The future was a world of virtual light where everyone and everything was connected by a computer in their pocket. The near future was a place where science fiction was within our reach. Looking back–just twenty-five years now–it’s hard to imagine that most households didn’t have a home computer, and if they did, it needed a program running on a CD/ROM, and a dedicated landline to connect to the internet. It was so slow and clunky that I kept a book on my desk to pass the time while images downloaded. There wasn’t a lot of content back then. YouTube wasn’t invented, or Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Most websites were basically product catalogs, or the text-only equivalent of public access television. So, I spent most of my time posting on digital message boards, excited to talk to other nerds about our special interests, like Star Wars fan films, and model building.

Process isn’t about being perfect on the first try. Process is about writing a crappy first draft, and then a better second draft. Process is about making a thing and letting it sit, then coming back to it with new understanding. Process is about generously inviting collaboration, and drawing a community together. Some of what I write in here may be a hot take. A hot take is not a thought-out response, or comment. It is thinking out loud. Please feel free to email me with comments or to propose corrections (kind and helpful tone appreciated)

For news, updates, and pictures of my desk and my dogs, please follow me on Instagram or subscribe for email updates.

Until next time, take care and be good.
Jeffrey