Johanna Winters is an artist and educator whose practice engages puppetry, video, print, and performance to confront expressions of embarrassment and pleasure in a femme body approaching middle age. Her current work considers the condition of a puppet-protagonist who performs her sensuality for the camera in a search for romance.  Johanna holds an MFA from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Lawrence Arts Center, ACRE, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. Johanna has exhibited and performed her work nationally, recently at the H&R Block Artspace (Kansas City, MO), Drama Club (Chicago, IL), Coop Gallery (Nashville, TN), and Soo Visual Arts Center (Minneapolis, MN). Johanna recently served as the 2022-23 Grant Wood Fellow in Printmaking at the University of Iowa, and currently teaches at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University. Prior to her artistic pursuits, Johanna trained as a professional cross country skier and competed on an Olympic-development ski team based in the upper Midwest.

During the residency I learned how to use the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera to collect footage as part of an ongoing project that explores lonesomeness, grief, and disappointment through a puppet protagonist.

I filmed with the puppet mask in the studio and on-site at the Alfred State University Pioneer Stadium track.

I also began the editing process and paired the footage with experimental audio collected in the studio using the Tascam audio recorder. At the end of the residency I used the Immersive Gallery space to test footage on a two-channel projection and take documentation of the work at large-scale.

Blinker, Work Sample Excerpt I.

Blinker, Work Sample Excerpt II.