Curriculum Vitae

kelly johnson is a contemporary American metalsmith on a continuing journey to integrate a mosaic of experience into a tangible expression of beauty.

ms. johnson started her METAL working journey pounding out lead solder and copper in her father's 'Radio Room' workshop at the age of eight while most girls were discovering makeup.  Her FIRE initiation is illustrated by an incident involving paint thinner strewn on a wooden deck and ignited at a family gathering not too long afterward.  During her formal education and completion of a Bachelors of Arts degree in Psychology Cum Laude at the California State University at Northridge, these underdeveloped instincts were briefly recognized in the form of the Fred Lauritzen Memorial Scholarship for Metal Arts Excellence in 1992. 

A daytime technical job in electronics engineering and manufacturing allowed her to moonlight as a nighttime student and artist of METAL and FIRE, taking evening jewelry classes, self teaching through books on Art and Metalsmithing, and becoming increasingly involved in the fire performance community.  It was this amalgam of material science, familiar jewelry foundations, and innate love for the element fire applied as a tool and guide that led to her core dedications to metal as an artform:   to utilize the unique metallurgical properties of the media; to create visually tactile effects while exploring classic venues of color, form, texture, and scale through ornament and object;  and finally to evolve materials by flame and other seemingly destructive forces, into a constructive whole.

She divides her time from metal form design, research, and fabrication by obliquely producing her own metal-based tools for the emerging art of fire performance as well as being an active performer and teacher of the discipline.

METAL + FIRE + PASSION^tm