Chris Johanson’s How About This?: Diagramming your life

Activity

Media

collage, drawing, sculpture, mixed media

Materials

Paper, watercolor paints, watercolor brush, pens

Download This Activity

PDF | Word Document

Watch Artist Chris Johanson Demonstrate

Video

About Open Studio

Designed by practicing artists, the Open Studio classroom activities aim to connect high school teachers and students with key ideas and issues in contemporary art. See all of the Open Studio activities.

Assignment

Because Everyone Lives Life Their Own Way

I learned about this in a math class for artists, but then I incorporated it into my art in my own way.

1. Pick a color.
2. Paint a shape.
3. Write a thought inside of the shape. Continue to create shapes, with each one intersecting another, and continue to write thoughts inside of those shapes. Do this for a while, because lots of things in your life intersect.
4. When you are finished, you have created conceptual art. More specifically, that's a picture of your thoughts and your life.

Helpful Vocabulary

Venn Diagram: A diagram that pictorially represents mathematical or logical sets as circles or closed curves within an enclosing rectangle (the universal set); common elements are represented by the areas where the circles overlap.

Conceptual Art: Art in which the idea is more important than the form or style.