Artist Statement

I am drawn both to the spaces where public and private life intersect and to the rituals that shape our daily existence. My ceramic objects, performative events and installations investigate how ordinary objects carry the imprints of human behavior, consumption, and choice. By transforming familiar forms into unexpected configurations, I invite reflection on how beauty, order, and function coexist with fragility, waste, and renewal.

Over the last five years, my work has centered on the paradoxes of domestic life and ecological interdependence. In series such as Accumulations, Wanderings, and Fracture, I have turned my attention to the plants and discarded materials that populate my neighborhood in Denver. Initially seen as intrusions- the bubble wrap, weeds, or wind-blown debris- these elements have become metaphors for adaptation and resilience. Cast and reconstructed in clay, they embody both the excesses of consumption and the persistence of natural systems that thrive despite neglect. Through processes of collecting, scanning, casting, and replicating, I reimagine these fragments as poetic witnesses to the entanglement of human and material life.

This inquiry extends to projects like Patterns of Seeing and Bernabe (Indio) Franco Park, which examine hyperlocal ecologies and the edible, medicinal potential of urban “weeds.” By foraging, illustrating, and researching these plants, I consider how sustenance, beauty, and environmental awareness might be cultivated within the overlooked spaces of our cities. The works call attention to the relationships between personal habit and global climate, between what we discard and what sustains us.

Underlying all my projects is a fascination with the tension between permanence and impermanence—the ceramic object’s capacity to endure for centuries alongside the fleeting life that it represents or serves. My installations and performances encourage communal participation and introspection, blurring distinctions between art and life, utility and ritual. In these spaces, I hope to reframe the everyday as an arena of curiosity and transformation; where the delicate, the discarded, and the decorative together reveal the deeper systems that bind us to one another and to the world we inhabit.

Biography

Born in Ethiopia in 1966, Tsehai Johnson received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Reed College in 1989, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art in 1993, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado in 1999. Exhibitions include the University of Colorado Boulder Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum (Wisconsin), Plus Gallery (Colorado), Denver Art Museum (Colorado), Biennale Internationale de Vallauris, Magnelli Museum (France), White Columns (New York City, NY), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Colorado), and the World Ceramic Biennale (Korea).  Collections include the Museum of Ceramics (New York), Museum of Outdoor Arts (Colorado), and the Reyzjanesbaer Art Museum, (Iceland).  She is the recipient of a Colorado Council of the Arts Fellowship and residencies in Germany, Spain, Iceland, The Netherlands and multiple locations in the United States.   In 2013 Johnson completed an Art in Architecture Commission for the Byron Rogers Federal Building in Denver, CO

Tsehai lives in Denver, Colorado and is a Professor in the Art Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.