Maine Artist: Susan Johnson

Lisa Belisle: Hello. I am Lisa Belisle and you're listening to or watching Radio Maine. Today I have with me Susan Johnson, who I first met at a Portland Art Gallery opening, and we were bonding over education. We were bonding over different paths that life takes, and I soon became aware that I really wanted to talk to you, Susan, about this very significant transition in your life. You are an artist, you're an educator right now, you're an artist and an educator. You have a lot going on.

Susan Johnson: Yes, a lot going on, trying to figure out which one I am.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I think you can be both. As we like to explore and celebrate creativity in the human spirit here on Radio Maine, and we're sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery, and you are now becoming an artist with the Portland Art Gallery.

Susan Johnson: It's extremely exciting.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. There's so many things for us to talk about, so welcome. Thank you for coming in.

Susan Johnson: Thank you. It's lovely to be here.

Lisa Belisle: You originally are not from Maine.

Susan Johnson: My family's from the New York area, and I largely grew up in a suburb of New York and a suburb of DC, also in an interlude there. But I came to camp in Maine, so I went to a girls' camp called Camp Arcadia, which is up in Casco, and really got to know Maine from the perspective of hiking and canoeing and doing wilderness stuff. And then when I met my now husband shortly after college, I had never been to the coast of Maine, and he is part of one of those longtime midcoast summer families. So that's when I started coming up to the Midcoast area. And I think I've been up in Maine every summer ever since. I don't think I've missed a summer. So there has always been a sense of coming home to Maine, and now suddenly I live here full time, which is a dream come true and marvelous.

Lisa Belisle: One of the things that you and I were talking about was, as a result of your transition from where you have spent many of your years now to where you're going next, this driving into Cambridge and knowing that things are about to shift. So tell me what you have been doing and where you're going to go next.

Susan Johnson: So I have a long winding career as an educator, predominantly in life sciences and biology. For quite a while, I have been running programs at Harvard University, which are community outreach programs, educational outreach programs, sometimes for high school students, sometimes for younger ages. But those programs engage Harvard students in the active teaching and mentoring, or getting in front of a classroom audience or an audience of classroom teachers. And it helps them learn to communicate better, and it gives them some exposure to how complicated and wonderful teaching is. And hopefully we're doing something in collaboration with the community that serves an afterschool enrichment need, or connecting a group of teachers or students to resources at the university. So it's been a really lovely career. Before that, I was a classroom biology teacher. Before that I had a short career in documentary science television, because I thought, oh, science communication, filmmaking, that could be my thing. And then I discovered I really liked the teaching part more. Did I answer your question? I got partway there, I think.

Lisa Belisle: Let's explore the first part then. So what in particular is it about teaching that really calls to you?

Susan Johnson: That's such a good question. I've been thinking a lot about it. I like connecting with young people. It gives me energy. High school students and teens in particular ended up being my people, and undergraduates aren't that far. I think what's most important to me is I like getting them excited about something that I see as important in the natural world. And that often looks like them just understanding how cool it is and how things connect with each other. So if I can get them to suddenly be aware of what's happening around them and understand, oh, these cells under the microscope actually are part of this larger organism and this is what they do, and I see this out here in this pond. Connecting the dots for them has felt very important. And since I was little, I care about nature and animals and the environment, creatures all around. And I just really want to share that. That's been a lifelong theme. Trying to get people to look a little more closely at some things I think are important, and then maybe understand a little more.

Lisa Belisle: So this is really something that I've come to appreciate myself recently, because when I interviewed Diane Bowen, and she's a sound artist, she came in and she said, these are the things that I hear when I go out into nature. And one of the things that I hear when I go out are birds. So I said, oh, I'm fascinated. I don't know that much about birds. I know the ones that come to my feeder. I know the ones that I listen to with Merlin. I'm very much a toddler when it comes to birds. But she brought me out to see the warblers and we went to Capisic, and she was pointing out different birds in the trees, and I'm so basic that I didn't even know how to use binoculars. So she had to give me some tips, and bless her, she was so patient with me. And standing out there and realizing that this life that I knew existed because I listened with Merlin and I was trying to pay attention, it's even another layer deep, and another layer deeper than that. So then when you were getting ready to come in for this interview, I caught you standing at the end of our driveway looking up into the trees. And I actually think that I understood at that moment that you were one of the people who pays attention to the trees, because that's where the birds are. So when you talk about looking for the scarlet tanager, just to complete that story.

Susan Johnson: Yes. I could hear it and I couldn't find it.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. But when you talk about creating interest and enthusiasm and teaching, it is something that I think is so important, and important for all of us at every age. So to have Diane Bowen willing to bring me out during this very precious moment in the spring when the warblers are in transit, and to be willing to share this world with me, and her willingness to be a teacher, you are bringing that gift to people of different ages. It's just incredible.

Susan Johnson: Right now I'm trying to do it differently. I am in the midst of a new thing where I am an artist in residence at South Bristol School on and off for the month of May, and I have some grant funding from the Maine Arts Commission to try to help their eighth grade class connect with the alewife migration that's going on right now. And that's something, I watched birds, I was the crazy elementary school little girl who saved up pennies for her first binoculars and found birds, but the alewives, you can't see them. They're under the water. And so until I started visiting fish ladders, the one in Damariscotta in particular, I wasn't aware of them. And then I started watching the river. We spent a lot of time up on the dam, and right now, just like all the warblers coming through, the alewives are coming through, and you can see these ripples across the water, and they're under there, and all of a sudden you see not one, not two, but 12 seals and bald eagles and ospreys and terns and all the gulls, and it's a crazy feeding frenzy.

So these schools of alewives are making their way up the river to the fish ladder. And my initiative with the eighth grade is to go look at these fish, capture some with the help of the fish agent up there who's working with me, we're going to put them in these acrylic tanks I bought, hopefully keep them alive running water through them, and we're going to take photographs and learn something about them, and hopefully do watercolor paintings of them. We were supposed to go on this field trip tomorrow, but fish, they're not working with my schedule. They're working with their schedule. So I was actually frantically communicating with the folks at the school, the folks at the fish ladder, and the alewives, they're hanging out below the fish ladder, but they're not making their way up it yet. They've kind of decided they're going to hang out and wait, which means we can't see them or catch them.

So we're postponing our field trip till next week. But in the meantime, I figure I'll go in tomorrow to South Bristol. We'll look closely at some fish eyes and gills and fins, and maybe we'll try to watercolor paint them. So this is all new, and I'll see what comes out of it at the end. I hope. This eighth grade group is wonderful, but what's going to catch them? And I don't know the answer to that yet. I haven't taught this, and I haven't taught eighth grade. Well, I kind of sort of did a long time ago. But being in and out of a classroom and not their classroom teacher, not having a lot of time with them, it just has to force me into a different framework. And being a teaching artist, and trying not to slip into the STEM teacher persona, I am trying to find that sweet spot, which is new to me. But it's been a lot of fun so far. So we'll see what happens next week.

Lisa Belisle: It is the whole idea of the beginner's mind.

Susan Johnson: Yes, and I am such a beginner at this.

Lisa Belisle: Aren't any of us at any given time a beginner at something? And so what I loved about reaching out to you after our conversation in the gallery is that you said, well, I don't really know what it's going to look like. I'll be in the middle of this, but I'm perfectly happy to have a conversation around it. And even that I think is instructive, because sometimes we want to believe that we should know more than we really have any right to know. Why would we know stuff? We don't know stuff until we've had a chance to do stuff. So your willingness to even come in and say, well, this is what I'm planning.

Susan Johnson: We'll see. One of the things I learned last week when I was with them was they are having a lot of fun engaging with the paint. I brought in professional artist materials. I wanted them to experience how vivid the colors were, how beautifully the pigments move on real paper, and how the watercolor brushes I gave them, they have a well inside the tip so they hold water. So if you learn how to manipulate that, you can really control the amount of water coming out of your brush, or how long the mark is. But to some degree, these are all technical things. So they're the skills they need to kind of know, and they're having some fun with it. But then, I know, I was trying to get them to do gestures. When they see the fish in the tank, we're only going to do a couple things.

We're not going to try to make finished paintings while we're there, but I want them to capture somehow how the fish move with paint, or some of the colors they see. And at the end of class, I was a little frustrated with myself last week. I was like, ah, they were all doing gestures, but they were sort of cartoon fish. They still weren't the fish we were watching on the screen. They were the symbols of fish that all of our minds make if we were told draw a fish. Okay, here's a fish. So how do you get them also to take some of the risk, embrace the risk of the materials, embrace the risk of not painting the perfect fish, or just trying to see a fish differently? Or maybe I'm just not communicating what I need them to do, but we'll get there. So that's where I am right now. And it's fun.

Lisa Belisle: Education I think is very fascinating, because there's such an art to it, and people can say that they are teaching if they stand up and, here's a book, please read this book. I'm going to tell you what's in this book. And you can say, I'm teaching you. And it's not that that's not true, but I do think it's like acupuncture. It's catching the qi. When you put a needle just to the right place underneath the skin, you feel the qi grabs. And I feel like education is like that, where you can set the stage, but you really don't know if the people in the audience are going to become part of the scene, are going to actually engage in that way. So what you're describing, where people are coming in and they're like, oh, well, I think I'm going to draw in this preconceived way, I think that's always the challenge, that you're up against whatever they're bringing to the situation.

Susan Johnson: Exactly. I think that's exactly right. Well, so I was also thinking I should do as I preach. So when I'm in front of my graduate students or my undergrads and I'm telling them what they need to do with children or teens, one of the things I always say is, if you can prime their brains with some minor challenge, then they'll be in a better place to receive the information they need to receive. And I think with science, I have a toolkit there. With art, this is the first time I've had to articulate what I'm doing. So I'm not sure what the steps are. I've had a wonderful teacher I stayed with for a long time, and that was in an informal context, so I'm missing my own mental scaffolding around what are the entry points for them. One of the things I thought about last week, and an example I give my university students all the time, is the Exploratorium on the west coast has a wonderful website, and they have a webpage and it confronts you with 16 possible images of the head of a US penny. And you look at them and you say, which one's the right one? And everybody stares and stares and stares, and you pick one and it's the wrong one. And then after everybody struggled with it a little bit, you go to the answer, oh, it's this one. And the text is varied, or where the date is, or the image, they're just these little subtle changes. But then the question is, well, why don't we know? We've handled pennies all our lives. And the answer is, well, your brain never needed to know what the head of a penny looked like. So what is that equivalent with birds, or with fish, or with paint? What is the thing I should be teasing them with to get them to hang on to what I need them to hang onto? That's my challenge. So hopefully at the end of this month, I'll have some better answers for this. But we'll see.

Lisa Belisle: I suspect you will, because it seems like part of what you're describing isn't just processes that you would use for every group, but it's also processes you would use for this group. So this isn't a group that you've spent time with, but you are spending some, I mean, you have spent some time, but the more you get to know this particular group, the more you're going to know what that grab is, what the scaffolding is that you need to put together. And I do think that that's something that maybe people underestimate when it comes to education, that you are always meeting people where they are in order to be effective. And you never really know where that is.

Susan Johnson: Initially, and even this happened last week, I walked in, I had a whole plan, I can't even remember now what the plan was, but I have all these materials and I'm taping squares of paper down on foam core boards, and I'm laying out paints just so, and I looked at my notes and I had bumped into one or two students. I think they were in the gym, they were right outside. And I was looking at them like, this is not going to work. This is not going to work. And I can't tell you why, but I just turned on a dime and I said, nevermind, we're going to do this other thing instead. And I think it probably worked better, but there was just something in the air. It's spring, they're in eighth grade. It was at the end of the day, there are all these pieces.

There's an energy that students do or don't have about them. There are things going on in their lives, and that's exactly it. And you have 50 minutes and it goes by very fast. So that's the other thing I'm reminded of. When I classroom taught, on one hand you have that longevity with the students. You really do get to know them. On the other hand, they're cycling through your room. You get a new group every 50 minutes or so. And the chemistry of each group is really different, and what you can or cannot accomplish with each group over the course of the day, even though they might all be theoretically in the same level class, it can really vary widely. So I'm reminded of all of that right now, where I am parachuting in. I don't know the students very well, and I have 50 minutes. It's very challenging.

Lisa Belisle: I think that's why I love that. This is what you spent the last how many years?

Susan Johnson: I am guessing 30 probably. I don't know. I haven't really counted. 22 years at the university, with high school teaching before that, documentary before that.

Lisa Belisle: So this is years and years, and you have the academic credentials. You have a master's degree that enables you to say, I'm an educator. You have the practical experience to say this, and you still end up showing up brand new. You still are the beginner and you're starting over again. And that's why I think it's so powerful that you spend all this time at Harvard, because you're dealing with a very intelligent, academically gifted group, and they would like to educate. And how do you help people who want to become educators learn how to move beyond subject matter expertise into actual education, into teaching and learning? And it is a generative process.

Susan Johnson: My programmatic goals do not include changing students into teachers, but it's been really interesting. Harvard College doesn't have an undergraduate teaching major. It's a classic liberal arts college. And my students come to me for all kinds of reasons. They might want to simply get off campus and do something in the community. They might actually miss children or teens in some way. They might've had a mentor or somebody who meant a lot to them, or some formative experience that changed them in some way and they want to pay it back.

Or they're thinking about, oh, maybe education could be interesting to me. So they come for all different reasons, and they generally stay with me for a number of years. I have a few students who say, actually, I think I want to teach. I think I want to try it out. And it's so interesting to hear them talk about their evolution. And one of the things we try to do, it's called the socially engaged learning program area at the Harvard Ed Portal, that's where my work is. I try to have students reflect and connect back to who they are as learners, and what are they learning about themselves as learners from having to grapple with learners who are very different from them, or very different ages from them. I'll have STEM majors and they'll have a group of children, and their schedule will be such that you're going to lead an art class, or you're going to co-lead creative writing for second graders over here at this partner elementary school.

And you can do it, even though you think, oh gosh, I can't do this. So they are often novices at the content, and it does put them in that mindset of, oh wow, I am new at this in front of children, and I'm new at this sometimes in terms of what I'm trying to do. But then it turns around and it gives them some really interesting insights into who they are sitting there in class. And then often they want to turn it around and try again after graduation. I find that very gratifying. It's gratifying to have any of them do anything wonderful, let alone teach. So how is it going to feel to leave this behind? I'm giddy that I get to paint full time. I've been painting for a long time, and it's just been growing inside me, kind of taking up more and more of my psyche.

I want to paint. On the other hand, I've loved my career. I've loved it, and I love teaching science. A couple of years ago, I led a workshop for my undergraduate group on how to use our microscopes. We have four fabulous microscopes, and I got so into it, and we had fun with it, because they were like, we've never seen you in your biology teacher mode. Wow, that's really you. So there's some very big piece of me that's been nourished by this career. I love the institution at this point. I've been there for a very long time. There are incredible, talented, wonderfully committed staff and faculty and students. And so when I commute, I commute from Maine now, not every day obviously, but frequently. And I'll take the Concord Coach Lines down to South Station, and then take the T into Harvard Square, and I'll pop up in Harvard Square in the early morning, and the square is quiet and the students aren't up yet. But I've been feeling very nostalgic this semester, coming up and all the different seasons, in the snow, or now the trees are popping, and it's a really special place. So I'll miss it for sure. But I'm excited about where I'm headed.

Lisa Belisle: Your heart, it's wonderful. When I looked at your website, you are painting nature. So you're not straying very far away from your love, you're just interacting with it in a different way.

Susan Johnson: It's interesting. When I first started painting, I loved painting landscapes. I love painting architecture. I like painting a lot of different things. I like painting en plein air. But some years ago I started just being pulled back toward animals again, a recurring theme. And I'm trying to paint them in such a way that maybe is a little less usual. They're maybe not in their normal context, or I'm not painting all of their environment around them. I'm really just trying to focus on the organism, the creature, and trying to watch how it's interacting with me, or it's interacting with its fellow creatures, or it's interacting with its environment. And for me to do that, I've got to spend time.

So it's been fun. For instance, we have a little whaler, a little 16-foot motorboat. And I am not a fisherman. I'm going to learn though, but I can catch mackerel. And so one of the earlier paintings like this, my husband and I went out in our whaler and we caught some mackerel, and I had a five-gallon tank aquarium that I put in the bow of our boat. And so I got some mackerel swimming around there and took 10,000 pictures, because I want to get them being themselves and alive. I am not interested in painting from somebody else's photos, or from a dead mackerel in a fish store that somebody's going to eat. I think I need to see them and ideally put my hands on them somehow, or exist with them. And so it's been fun to try to think about zeroing in on their essence and how they move, and how to depict the light hitting them and the colors, and they're evolutionarily built for speed and for a certain kind of maneuverability.

I'm just thinking about the mackerel in particular, or how do I depict how I see them through the water? There's one painting I'm really happy with and I want to do more like it. I integrated a couple of mackerel and I'm leaving a lot of negative space. The white space of the paper for me is the negative shapes around them. And so I had a mackerel with some water reflection on the surface, with pieces of a reflection of an osprey coming from above. And some people can see the osprey and some can't. My daughter told me, once I point out the osprey, you can't unsee it. But that was a fun puzzle, because I was thinking, how can I paint the fish in a way that satisfies me from an artistic perspective, a compositional perspective, and capture what they are and capture what they're in. So I was very happy with that particular painting. That's sort of in the back of my head. That's where I want to push myself. I don't know where that's taking me.

Lisa Belisle: I love that idea, because what you're describing is working so hard to enable them to represent themselves.

Susan Johnson: Yes, exactly.

Lisa Belisle: And I can see how very, very challenging that would be.

Susan Johnson: And who are they to me? I mean, we all have different lenses on the world. So if I can't put it into words, how do I put it into paint, who these creatures are to me? And then communicate that, or at very least, back to biology, get people to say, wow, what's that? Spend a little time with it. Or their curiosity somehow, in some facet of the painting or the creature or both.

Lisa Belisle: I can see why the eighth grade students that you've been working with, I can see why they would be painting cartoon fish, because what you're describing and where they're coming from, honestly, I would probably also be doing a cartoon fish.

Susan Johnson: I know. Well, and I haven't shown them any of my paintings. I am trying to figure that out. I don't want this to be intimidating either. I've spent 20 years painting watercolor now, and a lifetime thinking about organisms like fish or birds or sheep or whatever, and they haven't. So the trick for me is to figure out how to help them see the things that are in front of them, the way they see it, as opposed to having the symbol. And I think that I don't need them to see the fish the way I see the fish artistically. But how do I get them to look closely at the fish and see something they haven't seen before, and try to depict it without being fearful about it not being perfect? It's kind of a big challenge.

Lisa Belisle: Going back to, this is what fascinates me about education. Most of the education that I've done recently has been working with newer practitioners in medicine, and sitting with them and sitting with patients, and working with where they're coming from and working with where the patients are coming from, and trying to essentially do exactly what you're describing, which is to help facilitate that kind of communication, and help the practitioners to see and hear and experience the patients in a different way than simply, this is a person with hypertension. This is a person, and here are some things we're working on together. But you're right. When I sit in there and I have my 30 years of background in medicine, I see things very differently. So for me, I feel the same joy that you do, even if somebody who's brand new can see or hear or experience or communicate even just a little bit differently. And just that grab, the grabbing of the qi that we described with the acupuncture needle. That is truly what I love about education, is that moment that you don't have to do everything if you can do just a little bit.

Susan Johnson: Right. Just see things a little bit differently, or have an aha moment where your perspective changes. Yeah, that's perfect.

Lisa Belisle: Well, Susan, I am so excited for you. I personally always find that the right people interact in a sphere together when the moment is right. So clearly when you and I met at the Portland Art Gallery opening, it was the right moment for so many reasons. And I am so excited to see what happens with the students you're working with now, and also what happens with your art.

Susan Johnson: Thank you. And the Portland Art Gallery. When I moved to Portland, one of the things I had missed about living in the Boston area was the community of painters I had become a part of. And so it has been so nice to be going to the openings and meeting painters and hearing them talk about their art. So yeah, I'm extremely excited to be part of a community of painters as well. So we'll see where it goes.

Lisa Belisle: We will, we'll see where it goes. Well, I hope that you who are watching or are listening to Radio Maine today will stop by one of the Portland Art Gallery openings, and now that Susan is one of our artists, you can maybe spend time talking with Susan Johnson. Maybe you and I have something that we need to discuss. Maybe you're meant to come into my sphere. So I would love to also spend time with you at one of our openings. I'm Lisa Belisle, you have been listening to or watching Radio Maine, where we explore creativity and the human spirit in its many forms, including today, birds and fish, and life in general. Susan, thanks so much for coming in and talking to me today.

Susan Johnson: Thank you for having me.