Poppy Johnson reflects on a lifetime of art in new Floyd Memorial Library exhibit
Long before Poppy Johnson made Greenport her home, she was creating art in New York City.
“I think I always wanted to be an artist,” Johnson says. “It was interesting times to be an artist if you were a young person in the late ’60s, early ’70s in New York City.”
Her early practice included performances, happenings, and other temporary projects, and she became a member of the Guerrilla Art Action Group, an artist collective formed in 1969.
Johnson’s work with GAAG included an anti-Vietnam War action at the Museum of Modern Art on Nov. 18, 1969. Johnson and fellow group members staged a simulated war scene in the museum’s lobby and distributed a statement calling for the resignation of members of the Rockefeller family from MoMA’s board. The action linked the group’s opposition to the war with its criticism of the relationship among major cultural institutions, private wealth and the military-industrial complex.
That confrontational, ephemeral work represents only one part of Johnson’s long artistic career. She has also worked across collage, assemblage, photography, sculpture, drawing and painting. Many of the performances, installations and collaborations from her early years no longer exist and some paintings and drawings were lost over time.
That history helps explain why her upcoming exhibition at Floyd Memorial Library (539 1st St., Greenport, 631-477-0660) is titled Poppy Johnson: Introspective.
