For over twenty years Patricia Johanson has patiently insisted that art can help to heal the earth. For the last ten years she has been creating large-scale projects that posit a radical, yet utterly practical vision. She works with engineers, city planners, scientists and citizens' groups to create her art as functioning infrastructure for modern cities.
Johanson's designs for sewers, parks, and other functional projects not only speak to deep human needs for beauty, culture, and historical memory. She also answers to the needs of birds, insects, fish, animals, and microorganisms. Her art reclaims degraded ecologies and creates conditions that permit endangered species to thrive in the middle of urban centers.... Using the structures of nature as a way of thinking, she reconciles delicacy with strength, generosity with power, and creativity with consequence.
Caffyn Kelley, Preface to ART AND SURVIVAL
