Artist Statement: My name is Stephen T. Johnson, and thanks to my drawing students, I have inherited the initials STJ, and I liked it. I now use these letters to define the three pillars of my creative framework: Subject, Transformation, and Joy. The joy I find in transforming a subject into physical form through painting, collage, sculpture, and public art extends to the experience of sharing that work through children’s books, public spaces, and gallery and museum exhibitions.

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About: Stephen T. Johnson is an American artist whose work explores connections between words, objects, images, and ideas, moving between abstraction and representation through painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, and public art.

Johnson creates large-scale public artworks for transportation, civic, educational, and cultural spaces including the DeKalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, New York; Universal City/Studio City Station in Los Angeles; Dallas Love Field Airport; and the Lenexa City Center Library in Lenexa, Kansas. He is also the author and illustrator of numerous books, including Alphabet City, a Caldecott Honor book and New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, and A Is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet, also named a New York Times Best Illustrated Book.

Johnson’s work has been featured in museums and galleries throughout the United States, with solo exhibitions at the Spencer Museum of Art, Mulvane Art Museum, Memorial Art Gallery at the University of Rochester, and Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. Collections include Carnegie Mellon University, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Zimmerli Art Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution.