Catching up in 2014

It's now February and we are in the big snow storm, Pax.  As we wait for the biggest snowfall I am finally catching up on things left undone recently.
American Theatre magazine has featured my photo taken last fall in the studio of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders in the February issue. Here is the link to the story about Marcus Gardley http://www.tcg.org/publications/at/issue/featuredstory.cfm?story=3&indexID=41 young playwright making his mark in the world.  I liked Marcus immediately and find his plays accessible, and wish I could go to one of the three world premieres running right now. Black Odyssey at Denver Center Theatre Company (through Feb. 16). It takes Homer’s epic and recasts it as the contemporary story of a black soldier returning from Afghanistan. California’s Berkeley Repertory Theatre (in a co-production with Connecticut’s Yale Repertory Theatre) presents The House that will not Stand (through March 16), which takes the bones of Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and reanimates them in a home filled with “free women of color” in New Orleans, post–Louisiana Purchase and pre–Civil War.
In our small world of Columbus,  North Carolina this is the way it was and is as snow falls again today.  It will continue, the weather service says, for most of today.

So it is Thanksgiving and we are now almost at the end of 2013.  I went to NYC last week and did my interview dialogue with team - Norman/Durang, they have been teaching a master class in playwriting at Julliard for the past 20 years. 

Chris Durang was the first playwright I did in my series.  Marsha Norman was further down the road in the first year that I started 'shooting playwrights'.

I asked them to sit and dialogue so we could make a beginning, a prelude to the portraits and interviews for the book.

They continue to be supporters and such fine playwrights.  Am I lucky?  Marsha looked so like one of the students,young, slender and casual in the hall that I almost didn't recognize her.

When you are doing what you love (and Marsha continues to do that) it keeps you young. She is working on a script for a Broadway musical of Bridges of Madison County with composer, Jason Robert Brown.  Chris has commissions for Lincoln Center and will be going to LA for the run of his play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

Marsha Norman, Chris Durang      ©2013 Susan Johann

Pleasant Living and Wonderful Friends

There are good friends and people we trust in this world and the longer we have them the luckier we feel - and the luckier we are. 

Lee & Rick at Pleasant Living shop

In the next weeks I would like to do an 'homage' to some of these friends.

Today I will tell you about the first two - Lee Melahn and Rick Shaver.
They are the very fine interior design team,
Shaver and Melahn, and have won awards for their design, including the prestigious Kips Bay House. http://www.shavermelahn.com/content/21/

 In the early nineties they became photography collectors - and they collected some of my pieces.  Cordia's Rose was first.  A platinum print that was dedicated to a lovely child.

Cordi's Rose ©92Susan Johann

That's how we met - through John Stevenson's Platinum Gallery-Santa Fe and  New York.

You can read some of that story at their blog-pleasantliving.blogspot.com
and you will see the photograph in their space.

Right after they bought the piece they invited us, husband Dallas and me, to their apartment where they had hung my photograph.  We dined together.  Drank wine in front of the fireplace above which hung my work.  We had fun.  Over the years we have celebrated events together in NYC -openings, birthdays, Christmas parties- then in Madison, Wisconsin where they had a shop.

 A few years after we met they adopted their daughter, Emmy, and it was a delight to be taking pictures of the new family.  Emmy has grown to be a gorgeous young woman.

In 2011 we went to Madison, Wisconsin to be at their shop for a gallery night.

 Dallas was born in Madison and my family has deep roots there so it was a very wonderful, memorable trip down memory lane.  We found when we put the addresses for our childhood homes into the GPS that Dallas and I lived within walking distance of each other.  Such serendipity.
The Pleasant Living shop

Jean Harlow Iris ©1995 Susan Johann

had a gallery night and showed some of my work, we again had a great time together.  They are the best hosts and the people who visited that night were treated to a fine spread in a unique space.

Rose Unfolding©1992 Susan Johann in the Pleasant Living Shop

Sadly there was a fire late last year and the space is now closed.  Happily there was no loss of art work.

While there we got to see Emmy again and we had a wonderful dinner together.

 Rick and Lee have decided now to rent a pied-a-terre in New York ( they have always had their design business there) so again we can  hang out - now it will be  on the Upper West Side, two doors down from the first apartment Dallas and I  had.  Coincidences never cease!

I am so excited for them and feel lucky that we will be united again for brunch.  Soon.

Wow, I can't believe I have ignored this blog for the past 2 years. I am going to be busy getting this blog going again. So far 2013 has been busy for the photo business, not busy enough but better than 2012. My book "Shooting Playwrights" is finally edited, designed and ready to go. There is an offer on the table, and I have some serious decisions to make. I had an enlargement of the Winter Hydrangea printed in a limited edition at the Salon Show at Elder Gallery in Charlotte, North Caroline. It won the People's Choice Award - meaning the people who visited the gallery voted it their choice for the best piece of art in the show. At 43"x 52" when framed it is my biggest art piece.

Of course the murals at the Pershing Square Signature Theatre on 42nd St in NYC which are wall size are the biggest pieces.

This fall I will be going to NYC again to do an interview with Chris Durang and Marsha Norman, the resulting 'dialogue' will be the introduction to the book. I will shoot a few playwrights while there, see a show, have lunch and dinner with my favorite friends. I will try to keep this blog going!!

A New Moment

While the past year passed in a flurry with projects finished and new ones begun I am happy to finally be settling into this year of 2011.
I started a new series of photographs for my fine art natural forms. I added some larger shell prints. One of them won the first place in Photography in the Artists Guild of Spartanburg's Annual Juried Show, South Carolina.
This month I go to Manhattan where I will shoot two new up-and-coming playwrights, Young Jean Lee and Christopher Shinn. I am excited to add these playwrights, both of whom are well on their way to real prominence.

New Website

Finally the new website is up and running. There is new content and a shopping cart where prints can be ordered. Visit my site

Shoots this year

Early in the year the playwright, Tom Stoppard, had a portrait done for the "Playwright Series".

Then the Interior Design maven, Mariette Himes Gomez, and I worked together to create some more portraits for her website and for the cover of her newest book, "Apartments". Previous Susan Johann portraits had graced the cover of her first book, "Rooms"


I flew to Los Angeles this summer where I did portraits of several international classical musicians. The great violinist, Midori, pianist, Jiayi Shi and German violinist Korbin Altenberger. The shoots were done in the Culver City studio, Studio 8663.