Linda K. Johnson
USA, b. 1962, Portland, OR; Cascadia Region, lives and works in Portland; unceded lands of the Multnomah, Clackamas, Kathlamet, Chinook, Tualatin Kalapuya, Molalla
Linda K. Johnson, Walking to Know: Satellite, 2012, Dance Performance with plastic, drawings, and various props. Photo by Brian Foulkes.
Linda K. Johnson: The Evidence of Foot Fall
Aug 27 - Oct 22
735 NW 18th Ave, Portland, OR
Mon — Fri: 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM and Sat by appointment
About the Project
Linda K. Johnson, a dance-based conceptual artist and longtime force in Pacific Northwest performance, presents The Evidence of Foot Fall at PLACE, a landscape architecture studio in Northwest Portland. The retrospective and program series expands from her Mycelium Dreams Project, a durational cartography of Portland’s dance community, bringing together relational maps, interviews, action drawings, posters, costumes, ephemera, and a new solo performance. Across archival materials and participatory workshops, Johnson treats dance as a living record carried through bodies, sites, documents, and the communities that keep moving together.
Artist Bio
A native of the Cascadia bioregion, Johnson is a dance-based conceptual artist now entering her fourth decade of creating, performing, teaching, curating, and mentoring in the Pacific Northwest.
Her choreographies explore how we—as citizens—develop, inhabit, and embody our urban centers, public spaces, neighborhoods, and wild lands. Since her first sprawling, two-day interdisciplinary work in 1991, Finding the Forest, Johnson has activated Portland’s waterways, derelict lots, public parks, urban intersections, and abandoned spaces to create temporary, site-sensitive meditations on our shared entanglements with the built and natural worlds.
Her practice is deeply shaped by international travel, collaborative creation, and immersive training in dance, somatics, botany, human biology, western herbalism, and farming. Spanning more than 17 large-scale works, her expansive portfolio avoids repetition in favor of a radical playfulness, distinguished always by an underbelly of social engagement, inclusivity, and a deep generosity of spirit.
Linda K. Johnson, Mycelium Dreams Project Maps - (Clockwise from top left) Linda K. Johnson, Susan Banyas, Toshiko Namioka, Bobby Fouther; 2022-25, Various inks, pencils, papers, tapes, and stickers on paper. Photos by Sam Slater.
Linda K. Johnson, What Remains…Requiem Performance Drawing, 2006, Forest fire charcoal remains on Paper. Photo by Stephen Hayes.