The Tornado Hunter is coming to Carlyle, but he's not chasing a storm.
Instead, Greg Johnson and his exclusive art representative, Denise Anderson of Carlyle, will be hosting a showcase of Johnson's latest venture-artistic images created from Johnson's breathtaking photographs of extreme weather events-at Michael's Coffee Shop in Carlyle, Friday, Sept. 5 from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m.
"Greg's latest works will be hung in Michael's Coffee Shop in Carlyle," says Anderson. "I'm the contact for placing orders. Greg will also be bringing the Tornado Truck to town and along with the art for sale, he'll be signing posters and have books for sale."
Johnson adds, "I'll have some posters with me and some stickers. We always get so many kids."
A father of three, Johnson hails from Ottawa, but now calls Saskatchewan home. "I moved here in '95 from Ontario. All my kids were born here, so it's home now."
With a television series 'Tornado Hunters' premiering on CMT this fall, a Ford commercial "running even more than the Trivago guy", photographic workshops to host and public speaking engagements to fulfill, Johnson says that adding this latest project to his plate "is something I've always wanted to do. Of course, the reality is that time, money and your own personal energy all play a part. But I felt I needed to get some of these out."
"Typically, I don't print a lot. I've archived an incredible catalogue of all of these images. This will be a little collection of our favourites. For me, when it comes to these weather photographs of storms and the other weather events in these images, I find that as Canadians, talking about and following the weather is our national pastime."
"I think that's one of the reasons people have a connection to my imagery," adds Johnson.
"There's a lot of energy in these pictures."
Anderson agrees. "Every piece in this collection will be coming from a photograph or a video Greg has taken," she says. "Aside from the amazing images, what's unique about Greg's photography is how he actually obtains the photos. He's chasing down tornadoes to obtain these pictures; he's not just walking across the street to take a photo of a beautiful flower."
The pieces premiering at Michael's will be printed on metal, a choice that Johnson says "is unusual, but really breathtaking. We're calling them extremely limited-edition pieces. Right now, we're doing one piece of each work, but in the future, we may do an original that's a slightly different size and maybe a short run of five to 10 pieces from that. We want to keep the collections fresh."
In addition to creating this new collection, Johnson is doing commissions for clients. "Besides this offering, we're doing commissioned pieces. A lot of it is geographical, people want something that features their hometown, or expats, who want something from the place where they grew up."
Both Johnson's foray into fine art and his business partnership with Anderson have been about six months in the making, with a mutual friend recommending they combine forces.
"A mutual friend was a student of Greg's. She thought our energy together would be very dynamic. Greg really wanted to express himself as an artist and with my experience in marketing, we came up with a separate website devoted exclusively to this aspect of Greg's amazing career."
"We're looking forward to premiering his new art in Carlyle."
To view Greg Johnson's fine art online, check out: www.gregjohnsonfineart.com.
