Artists dream of the good commission, the project that will be seen by many and spread your work beyond the confines of your studio. But imagine you've been asked to design a national flag. Something that symbolizes the aspirations and character of the people it represents. But hey, no pressure!
Johnson Loud had such a commission, and it ended up in a place he didn't expect. But we'll get to that. First:
"My main thing is pottery. Some of the paintings I've done because there was money in it, like Michelangelo." He laughs. "He liked sculpture best, but they paid him to do the Sistine Chapel."
And so he found himself in a similar situation — namely, flat on his back looking up.
"I did a mural at the Red Lake Hospital, an octagon-shaped room 120 feet long. I could relate to the drudgery Michelangelo went through — crawling up the scaffold every day, going back down if you forget something, mixing your paints up there." Pottery was a bit less taxing.
He grew up on the Red Lake Reservation. "It was a very simple life compared to the present. Now everyone has a good running car, but back then the roads were bad — the road to Bemidji, 30 miles away, we'd have six flats."
When he graduated from high school, he went to Bemidji State. "I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. In high school I had airplanes hanging from my ceiling, and I wanted to design airplanes — but it turned out there was too much math and physics."
Enter the arts.
