Last week­end I had the delight of meet­ing with Elena John­ston, an artist based in my home city of Bal­ti­more. Upon meet­ing her, I was instantly excited by not only her work and work space, but beau­ti­ful, light-filled apart­ment (and her cat). Her home is nes­tled in a neigh­bor­hood with some beau­ti­ful old houses, like this one:

A cou­ple of weeks prior, I sent Elena the first half of a col­lab­o­ra­tive piece, with the inten­tion of a real-life Art Together project. Unfor­tu­nately, I for­got to doc­u­ment my half, but here is what she came up with:

My half mostly con­sisted of the back­ground col­ors with a few shapes. Elena explained that my shapes gave her the inspi­ra­tion to try and mimic what I had done (in her own way of course). She also added that the back­ground col­ors reminded her of the Fall sea­son, which influ­enced some of the imagery used as well.

Dur­ing my visit, the topic of sea­sons, mem­o­ries, and play came up in con­ver­sa­tion. Elena has been using col­lage in her work for about two years, using old mag­a­zines such as National Geo­graphic to drum up imagery. Some­times, she sim­ply cuts out tex­tures, other times it is ele­ments from the spreads them­selves. I love Elena’s most recent paint­ings, which are a com­bi­na­tion of both col­lage and paint­ing with acrylic ink. They are bright and lively, with a feel­ing of ease about them.

Elena told me the color of her walls are the same color she had in her room grow­ing up.


The base of this piece was made by rub­bing a rough paper (out of an old paper-sample book­let) onto the paper used in paint­ing.


A cou­ple of pieces that Elena has com­pleted recently. A zine and the album cover for Adven­ture.

We dis­cussed how the act of exper­i­men­ta­tion and play is impor­tant in any artis­tic prac­tice. Near the end of our time spent together, she showed me col­lages that she had cre­ated with oth­ers. Their process is sim­ple as flip­ping through old mag­a­zines and cut­ting out shapes and pat­terns. But, as we both agreed, the new ideas that can be dis­cov­ered from these exer­cises is priceless.

Elena is cur­rently work­ing on a new body of work that she hopes to show this sum­mer. She is also work on a music project, BAMBOO, with Jor­dan Bernier (pre­vi­ously fea­tured on Brown Paper Bag!)

I am jeal­ous of that flat file. Thanks Elena, for let­ting me visit!