by Michelle Mullen

Many of artist and actor Daphne Victoria Johnson’s paintings shimmer with glitter and cut glass, spilling over with vibrant color palettes and building texture upon texture until the surface itself seems to move. For years, she imagined what it would be like to have an exhibition of her own.

Her works now fill the Derfner Judaica Museum at Hebrew Home at Riverdale — located at 5901 Palisade Ave. — where the RiverSpring Living resident opened her first solo exhibition Aug. 30. Titled “Joy is . . .,” the show brings together abstract paintings, character portraits and mixed-media sculpture work, much of it made during a period when Johnson was slowly finding her way back to the creative life she feared she had lost.

Johnson described how the idea first bloomed, recalling how RiverSpring staff members stopped by her room and noticed the artwork crowding the space. One of them asked whether she still had a dream she wanted to fulfill.

“One of my ultimate dreams is to have a solo art show,” she recalled saying.

That wish became a project of RiverSpring Living’s Golden Dreams program, which works to fulfill residents’ longtime ambitions. For Johnson, the resulting exhibition is not simply a collection of paintings, but a record of a transformation that began after she arrived at RiverSpring.

Born on the Lower East Side and raised in Hamilton Heights, Johnson had been making and performing art since childhood. Her mother saved money to send her to the Harlem School of the Arts, where she studied art, drama, voice and dance, and Johnson went on to build an unconventional creative career. She worked as a background actor for years, including appearances in all seven seasons of “Orange Is the New Black,” as well as productions including “Gotham,” “Blue Bloods,” “Daredevil” and “The Punisher.”

A health crisis eventually forced her to slow down. When she came to RiverSpring, Johnson said, she did not feel much like the woman who had spent years crisscrossing New York for work and creative projects. Still, she wore a decorated hat consistently hoping it would signal something about her to people she had not yet met.

“I wanted people to see me and know: this girl is a creative,” Johnson said.

RiverSpring’s art studio became one of the places where that identity returned. She began going there to paint — but also went on days when she lacked the energy to make anything, content to listen to music, talk with residents and watch others work.

“As I started going to the art studio, I started opening up, I started creating art again,” Johnson said. “Little by little, I found me again.”

Her work, she said, greatly changed with her surroundings.

Before coming to RiverSpring, Johnson had primarily created imaginary characters. On campus, she began sketching actual people, first members of the transportation staff who had helped her navigate the grounds when she was new and unsure of herself, then nurses, activity workers, housekeepers and other residents and employees.

The portraits became small acts of gratitude. Johnson would study the shape of an eye, the texture of someone’s hair or another feature that caught her attention and then surprise the subject with the finished work.

“There’s something special in everyone,” she told residents gathered for a discussion of the exhibition. “I always focus on what I see special in the person and try to accentuate that.”

The residents had been watching her, too.

At the show opening, one neighbor shared a recollection of seeing Johnson working outside as music from a nearby gathering played. Johnson was spraying varnish onto a painting and, with her walker beside her, dancing along to the music. What began as curiosity about what Johnson was making became curiosity about Johnson herself.

“It takes months to create a painting, to give it depth, to give it something that gives people interest,” Johnson said. “It’s layer upon layer upon layer.”

Joy runs through those layers deliberately. The exhibition asks visitors to consider their own definition of the word and contribute an answer to a communal “joy wall” that will remain up for the duration of the show.

Johnson hopes the exhibition prompts something larger than admiration for the work. Her dream, after all, became possible only after someone asked her to say it aloud.

“Don’t be afraid to dream big,” she said. “You never know. You might get that dream.”

The exhibition is on view through Sept. 16.

Keywords

Daphne Victoria Johnson,

Hebrew Home at Riverdale,

Derfner Judaica Museum,

RiverSpring Living,

Golden Dreams,

Joy is…,

solo art exhibition,

Riverdale,

Bronx,

Bronx artist,

mixed-media art,

abstract paintings,

character portraits,

sculpture,

glitter art,

glass art,

Harlem School of the Arts,

Orange Is the New Black,

RiverSpring art studio,

resident artists,

local art,

aging and creativity,

community arts