Qayyum Johnson uses diverse materials to call attention to the startling facts of being embodied in a cosmos with light, sound, color & love.

As a devoted bricolage artist, Qayyum relishes vulnerability & compassion. Surprise, arch humor & cultural mash-up aim at truth-telling for social transformation. He gathers readymades, re-assembles found objects, makes fever collage, experiments with audio/video treatises, sends post art, and loves to create work that provokes reflection on the nature of self.

Language as invocation, as prayer-song, as invitation, as gratitude blessing for the profound contours of our indebted relationship to the more-than-human world.

Shaped by a Sufi upbringing and twelve years living as a monk farmer at a Zen Buddhist temple, Qayyum listens for wisdom in the body of the world, where he engages the primary questions of existence: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?

How do we find positive grounding and harmony within the speed, aggression and confusion of the Anthropocene? Meditation. Songs, myth, radical ecology, investigative reporting, depth psychology, religious studies, plant medicine, vibrant community.

Listening to wind & rain by fire, the horizon-wide story:

Art as a natural expression of the cosmos inclined to delight in ourself.