Flower as a Cosmic Jester Hat
How do you speak leaf?
Recently on a walk my young daughter asked,
“How do you speak leaf?”
My day job is as a “Language Producer”, which basically means I help produce voice-over materials in 50 different languages (I personally speak a meager two languages: English and Spanish, and “thank you” in a few others). That may be why my daughter asked about the language of leaves as we walked along a river with wind whistling through the trees.
The list of languages that are endangered or dying as the world becomes increasingly globalized is steadily growing, and if it were up to me, I think I would put “leaf” on that list as well. My most recent attempts to remind myself to engage with nature consist of tracking the birds that visit our bird feeder. My favorites are the Black-capped Chickadees, Lesser Goldfinches, and the Lazuli Bunting I have seen only once. We are becoming increasingly detached from our natural world, yet this world will outlast us or anything we create.
In the same way that my daughter’s question about languages stuck with me, seeing the creations made by children in Brooklynn’s Summer Squash classes is inspiring. You can read more about Summer Squash and how it impacts Brooklynn’s art in this email :-)
Studio snack & song 003
(also on Apple Music)
Conversation with Brooklynn Johnson
Tell me about Summer Squash and if you think it has had an impact on your art
Summer Squash is an art school that I started four years ago. I offer summer camps and lessons during the year and teach kids from 2- 12, sometimes a little older. The ethos of the studio is to teach kids how to be careful observers and creative thinkers, with the subtext being that they can find colors, patterns, and interesting forms everywhere, and use those skills to make something from nothing. They learn how to make their own toys, games, tools or art pieces out of all kinds of materials. I’ve been doing this almost everyday for four years.
I have wondered how it affects my studio experience. I don’t know that I see their visual influence yet, but maybe there is something to watching kids work; they are really good at allowing their inhibitions to quiet down so they can be moved by the excitement of a marker, or glue, or a pipe cleaner. For them, it’s almost like the studio becomes an insulated, sacred, little incubation room. I find as an adult that it really takes work for me to quiet my mind, so watching them focus and just excitedly grab what’s there and play with it inspires me. I want to copy their excitement towards materials and colors as a way of operating.
Lastly - I don’t work super well when I start out with a solid plan for a painting. The process is very intuitive, and even though I know this, it’s always difficult to trust that process in the beginning. Watching kids start something from scratch is helpful because you just see these wayward, crazy, sporadic marks that start to populate and build a composition. So, maybe there’s a bit of me that’s learned to trust in that process by watching them do it. They really just go and create without getting anxious about it.
What days of the week and times of day do you generally work on art? Are you more of a night owl or a morning person?
I'm most consistently a night owl. I talked to someone recently about the possibility of our inhibitions wearing out throughout the day, leaving a freer creative brain at night. It feels true for me. Lately I've been putting in a few hours after work, so I work on art in the afternoons often, too.
Do you work on one thing at a time or multiple?
I usually have like 10 things going at once, and when I get to the studio, I just see which one is needing attention. Sometimes I’ll gravitate toward a painting that’s in an early stage so I can loosen up and be like, “Okay. I know I can just dink around with this one to warm up, and then I’ll be ready to seriously work on this other one”. And then with another, I have no idea what to do, so I'm going to press pause on it. And then maybe by the end of the session, I’ll find a way to mark it up so I can respond to those marks later. But yeah, there's a kind of popcorn thing going on with all of them, and I think they inform each other.
This is part 3 of 5 of Brooklynn’s studio visit—read part 4 next week and be sure to follow Brooklynn on Instagram or visit her website to see more.
Artist bio
Brooklynn Johnson is an artist and educator working across multimedia painting, sculpture, and performance. She received an MFA from the University of California, Davis, and has participated in residencies including Casa Lu in Mexico City, Ali Yousefi Projects in Sacramento, and most recently, the Artist in Residence program at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been shown in California, Oregon, New York, Utah, Washington, and Mexico City. Based in Salt Lake City, Brooklynn teaches children’s art classes through Summer Squash Studio and oil painting at Weber State University.
Artist statement
When I paint, I pull imagery from a personal lexicon of symbols. Shells, plant forms, hearts, volcanoes, and infinity signs emerge as familiar anchor points, each carrying layers of memory and meaning. As compositions develop, these images overlap, change color, stretch apart, and become hybrids. The resulting forms are mere suggestions of what they once were.
Like collecting fragments from sand, painting becomes an act of interpreting a whole that can no longer be seen in its original form. The paintings are an attempt to understand what remains when familiar things change, and to observe the new connections, meanings and messages that emerge when their edges blur.
Things I’m excited about:
8.20.26 - 8.23.26 Mega Helper Mini
8.29.26 99.9 Gallery 365 one-year anniversary
9.2.26 Craft Lake City Contemporary Rarely Named show
9.4.26 Maddison Colvin show opening at Alma Gallery
9.4.26 The Outer Veil gallery opening