Search Results : sargent johnson

“Athletics” by Sargent Johnson

 Posted by on April 30, 2019
Apr 302019
 

George Washington High School
600 32nd Avenue
Football Field

Johnson Mural at George Washington High School

Originally awarded to San Francisco artist Beniamino Bufano, the commission for this work went to Sargent Johnson after Bufano was fired by the WPA when he proposed to use the Marxist labor leader Harry Bridges as a model in his iteration for the frieze.

Johnson Mural at George Washington High School

This 1942 Federal Arts Project gave Johnson the chance that he needed to express himself in new materials, and allowed him to work on a massive scale in well-equipped studios.

Johnson mural at George Washington High SchoolThis giant sculpture was done in 3 by 4-foot panels so that it could be transferred from Johnson’s studio to the school.

Johnson mural at George Washington High SchoolThere are Olympic rings between the female golfers and the relay racer.  The frieze is framed by golf clubs on the east end and oars from crew races on the west.

Johnson mural at George Washington High School

Sargent Claude Johnson (October 7, 1888 – October 10, 1967) was one of the first African-American artists working in California to achieve a national reputation. He was known for Abstract Figurative and Early Modern styles. He was a painter, potter, ceramicist, printmaker, graphic artist, sculptor, and carver. He worked with a variety of media, including ceramics, clay, oil, stone, terra-cotta, watercolor, and wood. Sometimes considered a Harlem Renaissance artist, Sargent Johnson spent his career in the Bay Area. Johnson moved to San Francisco in 1915 to study painting, drawing, and his primary medium, sculpture. He was committed from early on to using modern aesthetics to create positive representations of African Americans. Like many of his contemporaries, he studied African carvings. For Johnson, however, the purpose of these formal borrowings was to suggest racial continuity and dignity. In the 1930s, while working on public art projects for the New Deal, he began to expand his range of subjects, taking on aspects of abstraction as well as Mexican muralism.
Johnson mural at George Washington Athletics

*Johnson mural at George Washington High

 

May 112014
 

Maritime Museum
Aquatic Park

Maritime Museum Sargent Johnson Tile Mural

This 14′ x 125′ glazed tile mural was created by Sargent Johnson in 1939 with the help of FAP (Federal Art Project) funds. The east end, however, is incomplete.

 When the project began, the building was to be a publicly-accessible bathhouse. However, shortly after it opened, the City leased a majority of the building to a group of private businessmen who operated it as the Aquatic Park Casino, limiting the public’s use of the building. Because of this, Johnson walked away from the project before he had completed this interior tile mosaic.

Johnson has been in this website before here for the slate art piece on the front of the building.

Sargent Claude Johnson*

Sargent Claude Johnson*

Tile Mural at Aquatic Park*

Sargent Johnson

This shows the unfinished section of the mural.

And yes, those two animals are by Beniamino Bufano.

Sargent Johnson and Aquatic Park

 Posted by on February 13, 2014
Feb 132014
 

Maritime Museum
Aquatic Park

Sargent Johnson and the Maritime Museum SF

This carved sandstone entry to the Maritime Museum was done as a Federal Arts Project (FAP) by Sargent Johnson.  Johnson was in this site before for the log.

This building was originally a New Deal WPA (Works Progress Administration) building called the Aquatic Park Bathhouse. Construction began in 1936 and the building was dedicated in 1939.  It is a stunning Streamline Moderne style building and a focal point of the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

Both the interior and exterior of the building contain art funded through the FAP.

Johnson designed and carved this green Vermont slate that adorns the museum entrance. The two-inch thick pieces of slate were cut into three by four foot pieces and carved by Johnson offsite. They were then attached to the building using wires and plaster of Paris.

Sargent Johnson Maritime Museum

According to Gray Brechin, author of  Imperial San Francisco: allowing Johnson a prominent piece of art on a large scale, was a significant tribute to him and the African American community.  WPA projects should also be remembered for efforts in gender and racial equality. Almost half of the artists who worked for the WPA were women, and room was made for Chicanos, American Indians, Asians and African Americans.

Sargent Johnson at Maritime Museum*

Entry to Maritime Museum SF*

Carvings on front door of Maritime Museum*

Sargent Johnson

Log

 Posted by on February 3, 2014
Feb 032014
 

Corner of Webster and Golden Gate Avenue
Park behind the Rosa Parks Senior Center
Western Addition

Log by Sargent Johnson

I have driven past this park one thousand times and have always wondered about this tree stump.  Then one day my dear friend Netra Roston told me about an artist named Sargent Johnson. Sargent Johnson was not a stranger to this blog, his WPA work is at the Maritime Museum.

Sargent Claude Johnson

Born in Boston on October 7, 1887, Sargent Claude Johnson was the third of six children of Anderson and Lizzie Jackson Johnson. Anderson Johnson was of Swedish ancestry, and his wife was Cherokee and African American. All of the children were fair enough in complexion to be considered white, and several of Johnson’s sisters preferred to live in white society. Sargent, however, was insistent upon identifying with his African-American heritage throughout his life.

The Johnson children were orphaned by the deaths of their father in 1897 and their mother in 1902. The children spent their early years in Washington, D.C., with an uncle, Sherman William Jackson, a high school principal whose wife was May Howard Jackson, a noted sculptress who specialized in portrait busts of African Americans. It was probably while young Sargent was living with his aunt that he developed his earliest interest in sculpture.

Johnson arrived in the San Francisco area in 1915, during the time of the Panama Pacific International Exposition, which impressed him greatly.

The same year Johnson arrived in San Francisco, he met and married Pearl Lawson, an African American from Georgia who had moved to the Bay Area. The couple had one child, Pearl Adele, who was born in 1923. The couple separated in 1936 and shortly afterwards Mrs. Johnson was hospitalized at Stockton State Hospital, where she died in 1964.

Johnson worked at various jobs during his first years in San Francisco but also attended two art schools, the A. W. Best School of Art and the California School of Fine Arts. Johnson was enrolled at the latter school from 1919 to 1923 and from 1940 to 1942. He studied first under the well-known sculptor Ralph Stackpole for two years, and for a year with Beniamino Bufano. Johnson’s student work at the California School of Fine Arts was awarded first prizes in 1921 and 1922.

The 1930s were the most productive decade in Johnson’s career.  The W.P.A. Federal Art Project provided a number of opportunities for Johnson during the late 1930s in the Bay Area. Johnson’s first large W.P.A. project was an organ screen carved of redwood in low relief for the California School of the Blind in Berkeley. The eighteen-by-twenty-four-foot panel was completed in 1937 and installed in the school’s chapel. In 1939 he undertook another W.P.A. project, decorating the interior of the San Francisco Maritime Museum in Aquatic Park.

For the Golden Gate International Exposition Johnson completed his largest figures. He designed two eight-foot-high cast stone figures, which were displayed around the fountain in the Court of Pacifica. Johnson’s figures depicted two Incas seated on llamas and were distinctly East Indian in inspiration. They are known as the “happy Incas playing the Piper of Pan,”. He also designed three figures symbolizing industry, home life, and agriculture for the Alameda-Contra Costa Building at the Exposition.

Sargent Johnson Golden Gate Expositon

Johnson moved a number of times in the final fifteen years of his life. Following an illness in 1965, Johnson finally settled in a small hotel room in downtown San Francisco. In October 1967 Johnson died there of a heart attack.

DSC_2770

This was Johnson’s last large work.  It is not titled, and I could find out literally nothing about it and how it came to be sitting at this corner.  The brochure that Netra gave to me was regarding a fundraiser titled Reclaiming Our Treasures.  The intent was to raise funds to restore and resurrect the “log” along with the intent to place an historical marker near it.  The fundraiser took place in 1997, I have not been able to find out anything more.

The Smithsonian has a transcript of a delightful conversation between Johnson and fellow artist Mary McChesney about Johnson’s work that can be found around San Francisco.  You can read it here.

Sargent Johnson at Rosa Parks Senior Center

*carved log on Webster Street

 

update 2016:  The log has been removed and is now with the University of California for both authentication and potential restoration.  It most likely will not return to this location.

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