Carolyn Marks Johnson is a graduate of the Glassell School of Art, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  Her primary work is in painting and sculpture.  Her background  is the humanities: Journalism and photography, History and teaching, Law and working as a Judge for some 30 years. 

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        She provides the following:

           "I believe that everything in my life has come together in this work of art" 

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Excerpt from "Statement By the Artist"

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          The inspiration for Woman, The Spirit of the Universe, was the women that we see who keep our courts and government going, who nurture our children through the mind-opening process of getting an education, who administer to everyone the health care available, who prepare our meals, who maintain our homes and provide us, often, with the spiritual solace that lifts us up when we are down.

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          These women are largely unknown and unacknowledged, which will be what many feel when meeting some of those I chose to honor for living a life that lifted us all. Others you know well and love as I do.

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This exhibit tries to bring the history of each woman to the present.  These women have had their time and they are forever a part of history but I hope in this exhibit allows them to speak one more time. History has been my passion; but I started looking seriously at the history of women first in art school, where women were left out of the process until the 20th Century. Although women had also been painting 400 years, their art was NOT hung in the castles and churches or shown in public and they were not included in the History of Art, which was written by men. Women were not allowed to have professional training. 

I wrote the catalogue because I am possessive about what my art was about. I did not want others to turn it in to a protest a when it is a celebration of what women have been able to do despite limitations imposed on them.  Meeting these women and designing a collar they wore or that I thought they would wear has been a very personal journey. The work says thank you to all who came before us for taking those important steps forward for us.  

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