Intertransitive Artist | Photography, Handmade Paper, Ecology, Ritual
My work lives in the spaces between disciplines. I describe my practice as intertransitive—a way of making where materials, images, and stories move across forms, act on one another, and keep transforming. I work through photography, handmade paper, stitching, botany, ecology, ancestral research, and contemplative ritual to create pieces rooted in the body and attuned to place, time, and memory.
Many works begin with wet plate collodion on glass—a process that sits between chemistry and light. The glass plate becomes a threshold, a fragile moment when an image is present but not yet fixed. From there, the image migrates onto handmade paper formed from plant fibers, water, and place-based botanicals. Paper absorbs what glass can only hold briefly; it carries the image forward and alters it in return. Each piece becomes a record of that passage—of what moves, what changes, and what is received.
I am drawn to plants like hollyhock and flax, species carried by women across migrations, monasteries, and ancient paths. Their seeds traveled through pockets and hems, held quietly across generations. These botanical migrations echo my own ancestral lines and my interest in how materials, bodies, and memories are carried through time.
Repair is central to my process. I stitch, mend, and gild torn paper, honoring rupture rather than hiding it. Repair becomes a gesture of reciprocity—one element receiving and supporting another.
Slowness is both method and ethic. My work asks for attention, listening, and relationship, offering a counter-rhythm to extractive pace. Whether tracking sunlight through a room, making paper from local plants, or walking ancestral landscapes, I return to one guiding question:
What must be carried across, and what must be received?
My practice illuminates these crossings. Each piece is a meeting place—between chemistry and fiber, ancestry and the present moment, documentation and devotion. Through these movements, I explore how art can restore relationship: with materials, with histories, and with the lands that shape us.
Biography
Johnson holds two MFAs, one in Photography and one in Creative Writing, both received from Columbia College Chicago where she served as a Curatorial and Education Assistant at the Museum of Contemporary Photography for three years. She currently holds the position of Teaching Scholar in Photography at the University of Notre Dame. She is a recipient of an Albert P. Weisman Award, and Thall-Mulvany Awards for her work creating immersive installations that explore ways in which art and science may be a critical piece of how we create a more loving and compassionate world. Her work has been featured in the 2nd Quanzhou International Image Biennale at the Fujulian Huanguang Photography Art Museum, Hüten Gallery in Shanghai, China, Image Union, Pasadena Photo Arts, The Chicago Reader, National Public Radio, NBC News, A Photo Editor, and Frontrunner Magazine. Her works have been exhibited across the United States and internationally.
She is the creator of, “The Waters We Swim In,” a global movement for self-love and compassion, grounded in a process of transformative water-based portrait sessions that invite subjects to feel greater kindness and compassion for themselves while recognizing their place in the great pattern of things.