About Rose
Rose is an artist exploring aliveness, fear, and joy through painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in studio art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before attaining an MA in Counseling and Psychological Services from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota.
As an artist, Rose trusts the youthful experiences of aimlessness, play, and mess-making and suggests that they are integral to life. Making is a mess. Mess is letting go. Letting go is transformation.
For Rose, the quickest route to playfulness is to use materials and processes that can be guided rather than controlled. She gravitates toward working with large-scale items and industrial materials often related to domestic spaces. Through manipulation of objects and materials, spaces shift from beautiful and calm to dark and unsafe and back again.
Like a worn and broken toy cherished by a child, like the human heart, the artwork simultaneously breaks down and evolves.
At Freeform Studio, Rose facilitates both individual and group sessions, working directly with children and teens in the studio.
Rose's personal studio art practice explores similar themes of childhood and vulnerability through a fine arts lens.
View Rose's studio art practice at rosejohnsonart.com
Credentials
Education
- Master of Fine Arts — School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Master of Arts, Counseling and Psychological Services — Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota
Select Exhibitions
- Minneapolis Institute of Art (Solo Exhibition)
- Kathryn Nash Gallery
- Chicago Urban Arts Society
- Fernway Gallery
- Highpoint Center for Printmaking
Grants & Residencies
- Jerome Foundation Residency
- Acres Residency
- Oxbow Residency
Continuing Development
Trained directly under a pioneer in the field of embodied creative practice, with four years of mentorship and hands-on experience. Ongoing professional development in contemplative arts practice and child development.
Rose holds an active Minnesota Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) license.
About Michael
Michael Johnson is an artist and facilitator at Freeform Studio. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Arts from Gustavus Adolphus College. He was born and raised in Kandiyohi County, Minnesota, where childhood experiences outdoors taught him to watch closely and understand the movements of animals, the shifting rhythms of ecosystems, the often overlooked and powerful patterns of the natural world. His own studio practice draws on Minimalism, Color Field painting, printmaking, photography, and performance, and in recent years has centered on alternative photographic processes that respond to land use, conservation, and the Earth's shifting atmospheric conditions across time and place.
At Freeform Studio, Michael serves as studio manager and co-facilitates group sessions, leading process demonstrations in printmaking, photographic processes, and environmental arts.
Michael's personal studio art practice extends this work into the landscape, exploring land use, conservation, and the natural world through alternative photographic processes.
View Michael's work at mjohnsonarts.com
On these walls, what I made at five hangs beside what I make today. What your child makes here is not a rough draft of who they might become. It's already enough.