Kelly R Johnston is a sculptor exhibiting their work in the US and abroad. Johnston is a 2021-2022 Abakanowicz fellow, received the 2020 Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant, and the 2019 Emerging Regional Artist Residency at Artspace in Raleigh, NC. They have participated in artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Torpedo Factory Art Center in Virginia, and the Hambidge Center in Georgia.

Their work focuses on the body as a site of research and critical exploration. Personal, physical and emotional experiences are used to suspend discrete moments for examination. These are distilled to give voice and space to the body’s observations, and help what is ordinarily ephemeral, endure through time. Johnston is based in Chicago, where they run a DIY artist platform, Tiny Table Gallery and work at the Art Institute of Chicago.