[3] Her family later moved to Long Island, where she honed her skills as a clarinetist in the orchestra at Wellington C. Mepham High School in North Bellmore.

At this time she met fellow-artists Kenneth Noland, David Smith (sculptor), Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Philip Guston, and Joseph Cornell.

[11] Johanson began making large-scale, Minimal sculpture in 1966 with William Rush, consisting of 200 feet (61 m) of painted steel tee-beams laid flat in a clearing.

[12] In 1968 she increased her scale to 1,600 feet (490 m) with Stephen Long (inspired by the 19th century topographical and railway engineer), where 2-foot-wide (0.61 m), painted plywood segments were installed along an abandoned railroad track in Buskirk, New York.

The drawings, accompanied by essays and explanatory notes, were a departure from traditional garden designs and also a rejection of the formalist orientation of the 1960s art world.

[17] Johanson's move from making objects to working with the natural world—first in drawings and later in actual commissions—has parallels as well as differences with the emergence of Earthworks by artists in her circle of friends, such as Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt.

A difference is that many of Johanson's designs were meant to serve practical functions, such as flood control, habitat for local wildlife, and green roofs that absorb rainwater.

[31] To solve the problems of an eroded shoreline, murky water and algal bloom, Johanson devised large sculptural forms that broke up wave action and selected indigenous plantings as microhabitats for wildlife.

[32] The gigantic, terra cotta–colored gunite sculptures, which doubled as pathways for human visitors and perches for birds and turtles, take the form of a Delta Duck-Potato (Sagittaria platyphylla) and a Spider Brake Fern (Pteris multifida).

[35] For this and other large-scale urban projects, she worked with a variety of experts including scientists, engineers, and city planners, as well as with local citizen groups.

When San Francisco needed a new pump station and holding tank next to the Bay, Johanson was invited to co-design a facility that would be sensitive to the site.

By overlaying art, public access, sewage treatment, habitat restorations, and agriculture, she embedded major urban infrastructure within living nature.

Johanson used the form of the endangered Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse to create the shapes of the polishing ponds, which contain islands that direct the flow of water and provide nesting habitat for birds.

[52][53] The design encompasses two gigantic sculptures based on the native Sego Lily (Calochortus nuttallii) and an historic canyon, which are respectively located east and west of the expressway and connected by an underpass.

As practical infrastructure, the Sego Lily serves as a diversion dam, while the canyon functions as flood wall, spillway, and provides wildlife habitat.

The design is multilayered to offer visitors opportunities to connect in a variety of ways with references to local ecology, geology, and specific sculptural formations to recall the Mormon journey through Echo Canyon.

It is simultaneously large-scale gunite sculpture, habitat for native flora and fauna, a compendium of references to Utah's cultural and natural history, and an element of Salt Lake City's flood control system.

Utah's state flower, the sego lily, is the basis for the design of this section of The Draw situated at the west side of Sugar House Park.

The shapes of the flower form an amphitheater with the stem creating a pathway extending to a bulb-shaped overlook above Parley's Creek, which at that point flows beneath the highway to emerge five blocks away in Hidden Hollow.

[58] Entering the underpass from Sego Lily Plaza, the visitor encounters references to Utah's subterranean geology—a slice of rocky strata with a prominent coal seam and small details such as fossils and roots to be discovered.

The shapes of the wall reference natural landmarks and forms of Utah's historic Echo Canyon, which helped guide Mormon pioneers to their new land.

This miniature Echo Canyon is not only part of the flood-control system and a historical reference, but also a vertical garden with nesting places, water cachement basins, and ledges that provide habitat for native animals and plants.

Two large sculptural formations, Madonna Lily and Mary’s Rose, based on traditional religious symbols, shape the two main areas of the five-acre site.

[61] Currently in progress, this 45-acre project for McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada will be simultaneously a work of Land Art, a wetland habitat restoration, and a living laboratory for students and researchers.

[62] The overall plan is based loosely on a Monarch butterfly wing, paying homage to this endangered species, which begins its 3,000-mile migration to Mexico in this part of Ontario.

Pathways surrounding and jutting out into the ponds will allow visitors to study wildlife up close while a deep, central channel will give researchers canoe and kayak access.

"[66] Curator Barbara Matilsky has stated "Patricia Johanson was one of the first artists to think of art as a means to restore habitats and her work is an outstanding model for maintaining biodiversity.

Dutton, 1968/Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 Debra Bricker Balken, Patricia Johanson: Drawings and Models for Environmental Projects, 1969–1986, Pittsfield, Mass.

cat) Lamar Clarkson, “Earth Works,” ARTNews, June, 2008 Michel Conan, “Introduction: In Defiance of the Institutional Art World” in Contemporary Garden Aesthetics, Creations and Interpretations, Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2007 Hal Foster, “Patricia Johanson,” Artforum, Vol.

Patricia Johanson, A Selected Retrospective: 1959-1973 (exhibition catalogue), Bennington College, 1973 Carlo Rotella, Good with their Hands, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002 John Russell, "Projects from Plant Forms", The New York Times, March 24, 1978, p. C-20 Sue Spaid, A Field Guide to Patricia Johanson's Works, Baltimore, Md, Contemporary Museum, 2012 Sue Spaid, Ecovention.