Linda Johanson

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Posted by Linda Johanson at 5:25 PM

Linda Johanson: Hartland, Vermont, United States; When I was 12 I began to build. In a hot river valley in central California I would cinch up my leather toolbelt and run a skill saw over two by fours, haul smooth river rock up and mix mortar for stone walls and a chimney. A sculptor had been asked to involve students in a building project that would become part of our school. We created a library, two offices, a kindergarten, a pottery studio and a fireplace as well as waves of lyrical stone walls. The way we laid down patterns of river rock and wood allowed a lovely transcending rhythm, ascending and descending to overcome the limitations of their stiff, heavy shapes.These structures were used for school classrooms and offices designed by James Hubbell.I lived and worked at that impressionable time in my life with people who generated an atmosphere of a charged intellectual renaisance- inspired artists, poets, musicians and teachers. I have been a passionate farmer for 25 years and have worked on many dairy and sheep farms throughout the world in three different languages. I was able to co-found my own farm-based residential school for young people with special needs in Denmark in 1992.

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