{"id":432103,"date":"2026-01-27T04:53:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/432103\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T04:53:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T04:53:21","slug":"posthumous-show-at-lawrence-gallery-celebrates-the-feminist-textile-art-of-becky-johnson-the-lawrence-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/432103\/","title":{"rendered":"Posthumous show at Lawrence gallery celebrates the feminist textile art of Becky Johnson \u2013 The Lawrence Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In a gallery room at Off-Site Art Space sits a floor loom that was programmed by deceased textile artist Becky Johnson. Anyone is welcome to take Johnson\u2019s seat, pick up her shuttle and contribute to a communal weaving utilizing scraps from her studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust the fact that people were creating a piece of cloth, as she would say \u2014 all these different people are just grabbing strands, there\u2019s a table full of fibers, and you can take whatever you want,\u201d said Andrew Gottsfield, Johnson\u2019s husband. \u201cYou can write a note on it, whatever, put it in there, and it\u2019s in this piece of cloth. And I think she would love that more than anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson died in September 2025 due to an aggressive bladder cancer. She was 47. She had completed her second of three years as an MFA student studying textiles in the Department of Visual Art at The University of Kansas.<\/p>\n

A sampling of her vast oeuvre is on display at Off-Site Art Space<\/a> now through Saturday, Jan. 31. A closing reception will tie off the exhibition\u2019s gallery tenure from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, Jan 30.<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space People are encouraged to grab scraps of fibers and textiles to weave into the piece on the standing loom. Folks can also write messages to Johnson on the thicker strips of textile.<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space The standing loom with the communal weaving in progress<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s weavings and feltwork fully utilize the gallery\u2019s space, consuming two rooms with earthy tones and fibrous textures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Merry Sun, co-curator of the show, KU lecturer and director of exhibitions at Off-Site, said the exhibition\u2019s first room evokes the feeling of walking into an artist\u2019s studio. Adjacent to the standing loom is a semicircle of felt rising from the ground and blanketing the wall like a writhing sunset.<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

The second room of the gallery hosts experimental weavings, including materials dangling from wooden frames and the ceiling. Johnson tucked textile materials like felt into pockets studded along these pieces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey feel like they\u2019ve been alive for thousands of years,\u201d Sun said of the work.<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space Sun said the two long red weavings on the left and right of the picture were packaged in Johnson\u2019s studio with a label saying to not place anything on top of them. Sun was nervous to handle them at first, worried they\u2019d be fragile. Once she unrolled the pieces, however, she found how structurally sound they were. \u201cThey have a beautiful balance between fragility and strength,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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Mary Anne Jordan is a professor of visual art in textiles at KU. She said she worked with Johnson almost daily.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBecky had a really broad practice,\u201d Jordan said. \u201cShe did a lot of textile processes. I think her main interest was weaving and felting. She did a lot of natural dye work, and \u2026 in her personal life, she was a gardener and growing plants for dye.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson created all of the work at Off-Site over a brief year and a half period in grad school, plus around 20 more pieces that aren\u2019t on display.<\/p>\n

Gottsfield said Johnson was \u201ca force of nature,\u201d prolific even as she balanced raising two sons, spending time with her family and teaching at KU alongside her personal practice.<\/p>\n

\"\"Contributed photo Becky Johnson with her husband and sons on the steps of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Henry Gottsfield (left), Andrew Gottsfield, Becky Johnson and Charlie Gottsfield<\/p>\n

\u201cEven when we sit down, she\u2019d be drawing, painting, just always making something,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Gottsfield, Johnson grew up on farmland in central Minnesota, near Clearwater. She lived in Boston and Oakland, California \u2014 where she met Gottsfield \u2014 before settling in a farmhouse just outside of Lawrence in 2006. Shortly after, they had their first child.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s practice at KU honed in on textiles at a nearly molecular level, but she started her career studying cloth\u2019s end product: fashion merchandising. While in California, she moved to studying textile design at San Francisco State University and designed patterns for upscale sleepwear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Contributed photo Becky Johnson (left) and Andrew Gottsfield<\/p>\n

Before KU, Gottsfield said that Johnson\u2019s work was mostly utilitarian, creating blankets and scarves. Once their children grew older and more self-sufficient, Johnson decided to sate her craving for more conceptual work in academia. She was accepted at KU with a full-ride scholarship.<\/p>\n

Jordan said that as they cleaned out her studio after her death, they found the phrase \u201cEverything a body of work\u201d echoed throughout sketchbooks and notes on index cards, giving the exhibition its name.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt refers not just to the body of work as an artist, but even the representation of a body in the work,\u201d Jordan said. \u201cShe used a lot of anthropological references to women.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gottsfield described a recurring female form that materialized across Johnson\u2019s creations: \u201cThe arms are outstretched in the air, and the hair is getting blown to one side, and it kind of looks like\u2014it\u2019s not distress, but excitement, or just some sort of energy happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

He said this was one of the first recurring motifs that sprouted in Johnson\u2019s grad school work. It was born from her research on prairie madness, a phenomenon wherein settlers would move to the rural prairie in the 19th century and, left isolated at home often with children, women would experience severe depression and sometimes mental breakdowns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gottsfield said that, while Johnson had a deep love for her children, she could also identify with the idea of prairie madness, having moved from a city to a rural area without nearby family and limited resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I think later, as she was developing stuff, that kind of figure, that form came up, and she started weaving it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

She was also fascinated by Venus figures, statuettes that are tens of thousands of years old<\/a> depicting full-figured bodies with breasts. Johnson found that many interpretations of the figures were from 20th-century men who projected their \u201cpatriarchal thinking onto art,\u201d thus influencing interpretations of the figures for decades to come, according to Gottsfield.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He said Johnson was a meticulous researcher and voracious reader, and as she delved into prairie settlement, cave paintings and early human occupation, she filtered imagery and ideas through her personalized settings on her loom. <\/p>\n

The resulting work at Off-Site reaches a hand across time and space to unearth ideas of womanhood and deconstructing patriarchy.<\/p>\n

\"\"Contributed photo Johnson in a shirt that reads \u201cSmash the patriarchy\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Contributed photo Gottsfield said that even when she wasn\u2019t working with textiles, Johnson was always creating. In addition to being a gardener, Johnson enjoyed cooking, was getting into baking, played the drums and went on regular bike rides with her husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was just exploring those ideas, and how much influence the patriarchy, if you will, has influenced our thought on everything and how we see everything,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think from that, her main focus was to kind of break down those patriarchal structures, to reimagine art and even pieces that have already existed and been interpreted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan said that Johnson showed the same nurturing humanism in the studio and classroom, where she supported her cohort members and helped her students grow as artists.<\/p>\n

According to Gottsfield, Johnson was apprehensive about teaching when she was first accepted into the program at KU.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that was the part she may have loved the most,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen she got down to it, she realized she really loved teaching, and she really loved her students.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Contributed photo Jordan said that Johnson would join her to work in the dye garden at KU. \u201cI miss working with her in the garden,\u201d Jordan said. \u201cThat was kind of a special time for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jordan said her students loved her, too. Two of Johnson\u2019s former students, Maya Sabatini and Emily Bell, will give weaving performances at the closing reception Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe students are the ones that decided they wanted to have the loom there so that they could demonstrate so, basically, that they could teach something that she taught them,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is co-curated by Sun, as well as Cassandra Liuzzo and Ashleigh Robek, MFA candidates in the Textiles and Fibers department. Liuzzo and Robek also helped animate Johnson\u2019s work, each completing one unfinished piece using Johnson\u2019s sketches, mockups and parchment overlays.<\/p>\n

The weaving that the community creates on the standing loom will go to Johnson\u2019s family when the exhibition ends.<\/p>\n

Off-Site Art Space is open from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday at 924 Delaware St.<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

\"\"Merry Sun\/Off-Site Art Space<\/p>\n

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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they\/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com. <\/p>\n

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