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View Images USA Appalachia

Newport News, VA Faith Mission - Rev. Anderson Johnson 1915-1988 Religious/spiritual environment

Information: Anderson Johnson became a street preacher at the age of eight and spent most of his life preaching in churches and on street corners throughout America. When he fell ill in the early 1970's he returned to his native Virginia, where he spent more than twenty years transforming his two-story home into a "faith mission" decorated from floor to ceiling with portraits and visionary images. He conducted lively church services to a small gathering of devotees at his Faith Mission every Sunday; these weekly gatherings were impassioned outpourings of religious zeal, with Reverend Johnson preaching, singing, and playing various instruments. In 1995, the Faith Mission was condemned, and Johnson moved to an apartment, where he continued to adorn any flat surface he could find with housepaint. Reverend Johnson died in 1998. The Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, Virginia, mounted an exhibition of portions of his Faith Mission environment, entitled Anderson Johnson Revisited, in 1997. Since his death, the Center has continued to work to preserve aspects of his environment. Ginger Young Gallery

	Reference / Links:
	Ginger Young Gallery: "Anderson Johnson" Black Sheep Gallery: "Anderson Johnson" Visionary Art: "Anderson Johnson" America Oh Yes! Gallery: "Rev. Anderson Johnson" Outsider Folk Art
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Bibliography: "20th Century American Folk, Self Taught, and Outsider Art" by Betty-Carol Sellen, Cynthia J. Johnson, Neal-Schuman Publishers, New York, 1993. "Souls Grown Deep: African American vernacular Art of the South", Vol 1, Arnett, et al, 1995. "Contemporary American Folk Art - A Collector's Guide" Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Abbeville Press, 1996. "Flying Free: Twentieth-Century Self-Taught Art from the Collection of Ellin and Baron Gordon" by Ellin Gordon, Barbara L. Luck and Tom Patterson, exhibit catalog for The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, 1997. "Self-Made Worlds: Visionary Environments" by Roger Manley and Mark Sloan, Aperture, New York, 1997. "American Self-Taught Art: An Illustrated Analysis of 20th Century Artists and Trends with 1,319 Capsule Biographies" by Florence Laffal and Julius Laffal, 2003.

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