Gunner Johnson – Sculptor with a Rare Vision
Gunner Johnson’s exceptional art and sculpted pieces have shown in galleries and have appeared in the movie Batman Forever. His newest jewelry line lends practicality to an already exquisite collection. His art pieces and his jewelry are quickly becoming a favorite among celebrities.
Having started this career in 1990, Gunner is one of the few sculptors who sculpt in steel. He also sculpts in wax to create jewelry. How he got started is a very unique, and interesting, story. He was living with his girlfriend and was avoiding going to bed with her. He started drawing to pass the time. He discovered he was very good. He sold a few drawings, and from there, a whole new creative world opened up.
When I would draw, the time would just disappear. The next thing I knew it would be 4 or 5 in the morning and I was still up drawing.
—Gunner Johnson—
What were some of your first drawings?
The first drawing was like a starship portal, as if you were inside a flying saucer and you were looking out and you were seeing the other starships that were part of your group. We were hovering over a planet and the planet had died. It really set this whole imaginative thing off for me. The second drawing, I was a Sioux Indian warrior, and that was charcoal and white oil pastel. So it was all just experimental at the time. I was just fooling around with it.
People don’t just pick up a pencil and draw these elaborate themes. Surely there must have been some indication that you wanted to do this at some point in your life.
When I was a kid, I was really into drawing, and my dad said, “Son, you can’t be an artist.” I remember wanting to be an artist at 9 and 10 years old. He said, “No. You should be a doctor or a lawyer. People don’t become artists. That’s not what they do for a living.” So then for the next 20 years I didn’t do anything. I mean I was doing other things, but I did nothing with art. I just stopped.
As I look around your apartment, I am overwhelmed by your depth of style as well as by your precision. These pieces should be in one of the top galleries. What is it that inspires you?
I just start feeling something and I just run with it. I get a feeling to do a piece and I have no idea how I’m structuring it. And depending on that piece, I have no idea where I’m going with it. Basically, I start with a feeling and fighting that whole idea that I can’t do it in my mind saying, “No, you can’t do this. You don’t even know how to do this.” And just spending the time just working on it and working on it until an idea comes up. And the more I do it, the more I become trained in allowing myself to just go with the flow of creating.
This whole time when your dad told you that you couldn’t do your art, what did you do?
Stole cars, climbed people’s balconies into their houses. I did a lot of crazy things. I was building sets. Basically, my dad told me to do what I was doing and work as hard as I could to make a living at whatever I do. And then I got into acting. I was doing some nonunion stuff. I did a film with David Carridine. I did some showcases and some plays. I studied really hard. I was really into it.
So this amazing chair that you are seated in, did you create that? And if so, how?
A friend and I went up to Topanga Canyon. We were actually going to Temescal Canyon, but this time, they wouldn’t let us up into the mountains with our dogs. We ended up at this place where I had gone to many times to meditate and hike with my dog, Topanga canyon. This was after the fire of Topanga and Malibu. Everything was burned except for this wood that you see on this floor (pointing to the legs of the chair on which he is sitting). I had this flash of this weird throne with wings of this wood and I had never seen wood this large before. Later I picked up a couple of books called Way of the Peaceful Warrior and Sacred
Dream of the Peaceful Warrior. And I was really excited because I really liked these books. I came home and the next morning I was in a huge earthquake. One of my neighbors, Cindy, had been screaming upstairs and I thought she was trapped. So I jumped up out of my bed. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I started running towards the door, and an antique just fell. I ran into the glass and ended up cutting a tendon in my right foot. So here I was injured in the earthquake and I had three weeks to read. People started bringing books over, and I was reading like crazy and I was getting really aligned with things. I got in this state of mind that I’m going to build this throne—this vision I had.
FEMA had paid me $1200 to fix the broken antique, and three weeks later I got my walking cast. I took the money and I bought welding gear—I never welded before—and I taped a piece of rubber on the bottom of my cast and hiked for three more weeks to look for more of this wood. I retrieved over a hundred pieces. I brought it back and proceeded to build this throne. With this piece, I basically cut the bottom of the leg and set the leg into a formation, and then I started visualizing how I was going to build the rest of the chair, one step at a time. That’s how this unfolded. It just took me two and a half months to build. My first piece out of steel was a candleholder that I practiced on and then I started working on this.
That’s amazing. It seems so daunting.
Everybody has an ability to open up, create stuff, and to come into alignment with what it is they’re really supposed to do. I just happened to find it. I put a show together and I got this piece done. I’d begun to gather a huge show. And it was from that show that I sent the pictures for Batman Forever. They were doing this movie and I had no idea about the characters. I sent the picture and the next day Warner Brothers was at the show. They came to the gallery and they wanted this chair in the show.
What’s next for you?
I’m not looking for a show at the moment. I’m looking for a very large space because I want to start teaching in this space and I want to incorporate people’s ideas and what they feel and what their idea is in learning and to actually formulate ideas within the class at the same time to build more pieces. I’ve actually completed a jewelry line. I’m working on another one, a leather one.
How do you price your pieces?
It’s very hard for me to figure out pricing. That at times has been my downfall. Up to this point I get so passionate I can’t sleep. I’m waking up all night, which is actually something I do while I’m building pieces. Because I get to the point where I’m excited and I’m actually seeing the piece materialize. I’ll wake up, and in my mind, I’ll just be solving problems, problems I couldn’t figure out when I was working on a piece. I’ll wake up sometimes from a dream as I’m solving that particular problem of the piece. Once I wake up, the idea just comes.
Do you sketch your pieces before you create them?
I only sketch for clients that require a sketch. I might do a quick sketch, but to build something, it needs to unfold [naturally].
How can people buy your pieces?
Word of mouth, my website, or at my shows. I got so tired of trying to sell the work, but yet I couldn’t get them to see it. A lot of the galleries I visited wouldn’t take me because I didn’t have this long resume. I got so tired of trying to sell. This is where I backed out. I know that I have made something people aren’t seeing out there. You don’t see this in a gallery.
You don’t see an alien woman (“Spitfire”) created with 80 feet of tubing and steel rods in her body. People don’t do this. I’m still trying to get to the stores to buy it. People are afraid to get out of the mainstream. They want to do everything that everybody else is doing—they won’t take a chance.
Now I’ve gotten into a different state of mind. I watched the movieThe Secret—I watched it 13 times now. And this movie is so precise on how easy it is to get what it is you want that things are beginning to fall into my lap again. You want to hear something funny? That’s how I built these pieces in the first place. I just believed that I could do it. Now I can actually bring my jewelry line and my artwork together. 
Gunner’s jewelry has become a favorite of actress Rachel Melvin from NBC’s Days of Our Lives. She wears it on the show almost daily. Currently, Gunner’s jewelry can be found in the following stores:
Traffic
8500 Beverly Hills #654
Los Angeles, CA 90048
Black Blue
82711 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Rock Star
3835 Cross Creek Road Suite 3A
Malibu, CA. 90265 (310) 456-7374
Kitson Men
146 North Robertson Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA. 90048 (310) 358-9550
For more information, visit www.gunnerjohnson.com
Interviewed by Kaylene Peoples
Transcribed by Lisa Trimarchi
