“I went into architecture in college and they said I didn’t have talent. They never suggested art school. I left and finished with a physical education degree at South Alabama because I was good at sports. The last quarter I took wood cutting and printmaking class and discovered I liked art. I moved to Santa Fe and worked for a newspaper. A couple of years later I moved back to Mobile and lived in my parent’s house and started making stuffed sculptures and art dolls made of fabric. My mother sewed and taught me. I did some painting and started scribbling. It became more whimsical with paper mache. I learned everything by trial and error. I saw giant puppets on the Internet and started making my own. I realized they would be perfect for Art Walk on Dauphin and have done Mobi Downtown with street puppets downtown for six years. I wanted to take mask making and puppetry to adults and children so people would make there own and there would be many more puppets in the streets. I dreamed that creating puppets would bring people together and form a community. Within that community, If you needed help or a  ladder you could go to each other. That hasn’t happened yet. I am not very social, but when it comes to art, I can put myself out there. 

As a kid, I doodled and drew guys with beards. I made matchbox cities and dirt piles. My mother was a painter and I grew up smelling oil paint. I had a show at the Arts Council seven years ago. My mother got to see other people appreciating my work. I would like to be an artist that people want to buy things from. I have sold some pieces, but it is hard getting it out there. Maybe this is the time. I make masks now. My job is building Mardi Gras floats for Carnival Arts. I sculpt big figures, tear the floats apart and put them back together. I have been doing it for seven years, it is the perfect job for me. Somehow what is right finds you. 

Art helps me make sense of my life. Sometimes it takes me to dark places. I wrote a few poems on the back or the front of pieces I made. I don’t write happy stuff.  People relate more to the dark because we all have a dark side even if we hide it.  

Save me

My mind and soul revolt, 

burned by the living I make

The pieces of me should cost more

I die in my laboring body

I live in my creative spirit

It cost nothing to be whole

Scars erased by my passion

My mind and soul at peace

The back of this one is ‘Silence.’  ‘If there is a truth that has always been, it is that I am more quiet than loud, more silence than noise.’ That is me.  I like to be anonymous.”

(Nat Johnson)