MLK PHILLY ARTIST:

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MLK PHILLY ARTIST:

POSTED: Tuesday, January 18, 2011, 3:16 PM

Leroy Johnson's found-art cityscape in his new exhibit "Remnants of a City" takes you onboard an El ride filled with more than fifty years of commuting and collecting the streets â fragments of the sidewalk, bits of toys, newspaper shreds, and faded photographs, spoons from McDonalds, you name it. The exhibit will run through February 19th at the Magic Gardens, with an opening public reception on January 28^th. Johnson stopped by for MLK Day to lead an art workshop for children. He took some time out to speak with CP about his artwork and its relation to MLK, but when the kids arrived, you could see who he really wanted to talk to. "It's always children who see my artwork the best," said Johnson. "They inspect every word and detail just as carefully as someone reading James Joyce." That said, Johnson's dizzying play with perspective and medium â sometimes throwing in acrylic, photography, sharpies, and sculpture into the same piece â have more to say for themselves than an unaffected eagerness. A number of Johnson's ceramics and dioramas tell sobering stories of gang violence and Philly's history of racial inequality, while at the same reflecting the in-your-face creativity of a city that has grown up alongside the Philadelphia native, who recalled reading Richard Wright in the fifties and knowing then that he would be an artist, even if he was black. For Johnson, education and imagination were the keys to MLK's dream of equality. And you can see it all happening in his art. "I feel like an alchemist. Trash, garbage, whatever you want to call it, I want to turn it into gold...When I was younger, I used to worry when I would break something in the studio. Now, I realize that I need those broken pieces so that I can form them into something new." While Johnson's subjects are by no means limited to issues of race and urban inequality, works entitled "Lynching Series" and "Rest In Peace" are appropriate reminders of what, for many, is not a long forgotten chapter in Philadelphia history; the latter piece depicts a churchyard scene that Johnson painted during the crack epidemic: "In the news, all you'd hear was that crack was everywhere. But, I was in the hood, and I knew that every three houses there was a church; everyone was always praying. I needed to show that you can't know a person from just one encounter anymore than you can know a neighborhood from just one detail." Alongside these socially minded works, however, hang brightly-lit portraits of Philly's neighborhoods as seen from the El, a place where all city-goers share the same view â graffiti and picturesque skylines alike. As it turns out, these vignettes come from an affectionate nostalgia (something most commuters don't attribute to Market-Frankford); Recalling his hour-long commute from Eastwick, Johnson said, "You'd crossed the river on the trolley, look down, and see the water beneath your feet."

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