JOHNSONNETS
THE POETRY OF RANDY JOHNSON
AVAILABLE NOW
THE BOOK
Randy Johnson’s mid-20th century birth in a mid-sized city located at the mid-point of the North American continent seemed to place him on the very pulse of all things creative. His passion for drawing, inventing, and building emerged at an early age, and growing up in Winnipeg allowed him all the scope he needed to express his vast imagination.
Impatiently exploding out of his University of Manitoba design studies and veering away from his initial goal of architecture, Randy quickly set out on an entrepreneurial path to Regina, then Toronto. His partnership with Terry Brown at Street Seat Systems brought them renown in urban design and street furniture projects. When Randy eventually joined the larger company of Entro Communications, he became a creator and influencer of international status, winning several awards for his wayfinding designs.
As true as his own rising star, Randy never lost sight of the most essential characteristics of a life well-lived, taking inspiration from his small, perfect garden and from the infinite nature of the human condition, while keeping in touch with an astonishing number of friends and family around the world. He and his dog Jasper were regulars at brunches and coffee gatherings on The Danforth in Toronto, where an endless conversation on books, travel, science, politics, and art was balanced with both laughter and gravity.
Through it all, Randy wrote his poetry. Writing was his way of absorbing meaning, turning it inside out, and sending it back into the world.
-Pamela Kat Johnson
ARTIST'S
STATEMENT
Are we humans as sophisticated as we like to think we are? Can we sustain brilliant thoughts, deeds, examples of great creativity, simple human kindness? Or does our unchecked rapacious thoughtless consumption, spoilage, and determined destruction of this beautiful blue green-white orb in the middle of nowhere, our only home, make us just another virus?
Reality: one hell of a concept.
After over forty years as a designer in a broad array of disciplines, I am in self-imposed semi-retirement. And I find myself fully engaged in writing poetry — so satisfying after only sporadically pecking away at it since university days.
Interestingly, I find the design and poetry process, at least my process, to have similarities. There is initial inspiration, a concept emerges, it is expanded, revised, edited, a metamorphosis occurs — resulting in a finished product. And along the way my internal process of what I call “connecting the dots” allows me to draw upon personal likes/dislikes, influences, past events or experiences, or even seemingly unrelated things/ideas in working towards a final product.
Randy Johnson
March 24, 1951 (Winnipeg)
to July 17, 2022 (Toronto)
