Warden artist turns art accident into triumph

WARDEN - Think of being an artist, with a stoneware plaque that's one-fourth of a commissioned work that has to be finished and installed in about six weeks. It represents a summer's worth of thought and effort in design and execution.

Now pick it up and break it.

"It had to be done," Betty Johanson said. She was faced with the challenge of rescuing an artistic disaster. Betty's artistically drastic solution was successful; the results can be seen in the office at the new Wahitis Elementary School in Othello.

Johanson's friend and fellow Othello School District employee Sharon Bray commissioned the tile sculpture, a depiction of the school's hawk mascot. Bray said as far as she is concerned art is important, engaging and affecting people in many different ways. In her case it was a comforting and engaging presence while she waited for her husband to have medical treatments in Seattle, she said.

"I wanted art everywhere," Bray said, "and here we had this golden opportunity." Wahitis received money for an art installation as part of the construction allocation, but Bray wanted more.

"I saved money each month for a year," she said. And to execute the commission she chose her friend, whose desk was just down the hall and who was on the committee picking the publicly funded project.

Johanson's husband was scheduled for knee surgery, so Betty worked on the design while she waited at the hospital. Back in her studio she rolled out the tiles, built up the surface so she could carve out the design. "They had to dry really slowly, so they didn't warp," Johanson said. "You have to be really careful not to bend the tiles. Clay has a good memory." If an artist bends wet clay, it will try to return to the bent state when it's dry, she said.

She fired the tiles, added the color glazes and fired them again. That was when disaster struck. "Two of the tiles for the hawk broke during the firing," she said. And the finished plaque was supposed to be installed in time for Wahitis' grand opening about six weeks away. Definitely disaster.

"Sharon said, 'Betty, you're the artist. Make it work,'" Johanson said. So Betty spent an entire day thinking over the options, looking for a way to salvage the project. In the end there was no way around it, the only solution was to break the two intact tiles.

"When that decision came to me, it was just a huge relief," she said. But then she had to actually do it, really break them, and that was just a little frightening, she said. She was afraid they would crumble, but the first one broke exactly as planned.

"I think in the end it was better," she said. "I love it."

Betty Johanson has been working in clay since 1977, not long after she saw a potter working the wheel at a festival in Tri-Cities. Johanson was a stay-at-home mom, caring for the couple's three children. "I just said to my husband, in my own little naive way, 'I can do that,'" she said.

She signed up for a class at the Old Hotel art gallery in Othello. "I made two pots on the wheel and then I bought a wheel and taught myself, basically."

The wheel is her favorite tool, she said. "I enjoy hand building, but it's a really slow process." Despite the mishaps the tile project was a winner too. "I really loved that process as well."

As a potter Johanson was aware of the possibilities when Mt. St. Helens sent out enough ash to block the sun around her house. "We laid out sheets and blankets to catch the ash. Then I started making glazes to use the volcanic ash." The pots with the Mt. St. Helens glaze probably went to every state in the union and many foreign countries, she said. Some of the St. Helens ash is in the glaze of the Wahitis pieces.

"I always start out with a plan," she said. As a new artist she determined what the finished product would be while it was on the wheel, but she decided she wasn't learning very much that way, she said. Now she starts with a plan and tries to work in a series, dozens or half-dozens. "I always try to improve on the first one of each series."

Johanson said her art was also a pretty good business; she was selling pots at galleries and at shows in Richland and Boise, Idaho among other places. She started teaching continuing education ceramics classes at Big Bend Community College in the mid-1990s. The teaching in her BBCC classes goes both ways, she said. " I learn from my students as well."

But the 2001 terrorist attacks had a big effect on the art world as sales dried up, galleries closed. "I decided to get a job," Johanson said. She worked as a substitute paraprofessional in the Othello School District and was hired full time in 2006.

Since 1977 she's been a ceramic artist, no matter what else was going on. "I just love the feel of the clay. Maybe it's from making mud pies as a little girl."

It's been a learning process the whole way. "There's always something to learn. As a potter and an artist, you never stop learning," she said.