Story Upon Story

Story Upon Story is an intaglio/relief print that engages themes of accumulation, layering, and stratified meaning. The title suggests narrative sedimentation — histories or accounts deposited one upon another — and Johnson likely structured the composition through visible stacking or layering of marks, with earlier or deeper elements partially obscured by later passages. The combination of intaglio and relief naturally produces this effect: intaglio marks printed from incised plates have a different physical character than relief-printed surfaces, and both can coexist within a single impression in ways that register as distinct visual strata. Johnson's work with handmade paper is relevant here as well, since the substrate itself can be layered or embedded with material. Across her career she made work that treated the surface of a print as a record of process and time, and Story Upon Story names that structural interest directly.