Sue Johnson was born in San Francisco, CA in 1957. She earned a B.F.A. in Painting from Syracuse University in 1979 and studied art in London and Florence in 1977-78. In 1981 she earned an M.F.A. in Painting from Columbia University in New York. She is currently the Stephen Muller Distinguished Professor of Art at St. Mary’s College of Maryland where she also serves as Chair of the Department of Art and Art History and is Co-Director of The Artist House at SMCM, an artist-in-residence program at the college.

Recently the artist completed a collaborative project with the American Philosophical Society for the exhibition, Treasures Revealed: 260 Years of Collecting at the APS for which she created new works in response to archival materials in the society’s collections. Johnson has received library research fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society and the American Philosophical Society, and grants from the Maryland State Arts Council, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, NEA/Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She has been awarded residency fellowships by the Mac Dowell Colony, Art Omi International Artist’s Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, and Millay Colony for the Arts among others. Exhibition reviews and articles on her work have appeared in the New York Times, New Art Examiner, Art Papers, Artscope, The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post.

The Alternate Encyclopedia, an ever-expanding and shifting universe, has been exhibited widely at such venues as the Tweed Museum of Art -University of Minnesota-Duluth, Midwest Museum of American Art, McLean Project for the Arts, Hollins University, Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Anderson Gallery, Maryland Art Place, Bucknell University, Illinois State University and Emory University. Upcoming exhibitions will be held at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Swarthmore College and the University of Richmond Art Museums.