Born in Cicero, Indiana, Benjamin Johnson currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his BFA in glass from Kent State University and his MFA in glass from Ball State University. Johnson’s work is widely exhibited and held in the collections of the Indiana State Museum, the Evansville Art Museum, and the Glick Eye Institute. His work has received numerous best in show awards and he has been recognized as a Rising Star in contemporary glass at the Museum of American Glass in Millville, NJ. He has been the recipient of a Windgate Fellowship Grant Award, an Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, a Metropolitan Contemporary Glass Group Jerry Raphael Fellowship, a Creative Renewal Arts Fellowship, and the Indianapolis Art Center Skip McKinney Faculty of the Year Award. Benjamin has taught glass at the Herron School of Art, Indianapolis Art Center, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, and is currently Chair of Glass at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
An artist committed to sculpture, the design of contemporary glass objects, and the architecture of spatial installations, Johnson’s work explores pattern and texture to tell visual stories about our environment. Benjamin wants the viewer to consider their presence in relation to intangible micro and macrocosmic realities. His work considers the impressions left from the connective interactions that affect and contribute to a visual history which tells a story of the natural cycles in our environment.