Vanessa Johnson
Vanessa Johnson is a Griot; a Storyteller in the West African Tradition. She is a Writer, a Playwright, an Actor, a Fiber Artist, Museum Consultant, Community Activist, Community Researcher, Teaching Artist, and directs her storytelling band “Mate Masie” (ma-tee ma-say). “Mate Masie”. She was recipient of 2022-2024 “Creatives Rebuild NY” funded by the Ford Foundation and the Mellon Foundation. At present, Johnson is an Artist in Residence for the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation women’s rights center. As a consultant for the museum, she designed the Underground Railroad Room, and was trained in Dialogue Facilitation for the museum’s Community Dialogue Program on Reproductive Rights (“Who Chooses?”). In 2012-13 Ms. Johnson was the Gage Foundation Community Liaison for their Girl’s Ambassadors for Human Rights Program, sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the International Coalition of Sites of Conscious, between the United States (Syracuse), Chili, and Sri Lanka. She directed the program from 2016-2024.
Ms. Johnson served on the Juneteenth Committee and Coordinated the annual festival at the Southwest Center in Syracuse, NY for three years, creating and directing the “Juneteenth Interactive Museum” for 5 years. Vanessa was the co-coordinator of the New York State Fair Pan African Village for nine years, founding and implementing the “Harambee Youth Tent” which offered free art and cultural experiences for youth and adults. She founded “Syracuse Africa Bound” in 1989 offering youth 10-18 travel and cultural exploration in Ghana, West Africa. Vanessa was the Director of Education for the Onondaga Historical Association for four 1/2 years, using her storytelling talents to tell the history of Onondaga County at the museum, schools, and community presentations throughout New York State. She currently “Tells” at schools, Universities, Colleges, Museums, Libraries, and Community Events throughout the U.S. Ms. Johnson’s one woman shows include her portrayals of Fannie Lou Hamer, Audrey Lourde, and Julia Cooper. She will portray Shirley Chisolm in May of 2025 at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse. She is developing a new solo show portraying Barbara Jordan for her residency at the Gage Foundation.
As a visual artist, her first solo quilt show, “Unwrapping Vanessa”, was exhibited at Syracuse’s ArtRage Gallery in 2017. In February/March 2022 she curated her first exhibition “The Struggle to Connect”, a visual conversation between women of color and women of european descent about race in America. Summer of 2022 her fiber arts show “In the Voice of God – The Spirituality of Harriet Tubman was on exhibit at the Schweinfurth Art Center and at the Cayuga Museum in Auburn NY. Her solo exhibit, “Straddling Oceans” spring 2023, was at the Syracuse University Community Folk Art Gallery. The exhibition spoke to her dual life in the U.S. and Ghana, West Africa. Ms. Johnson’s solo fiber arts exhibition addressing environmental justice and people of color, “Center of the Crossroads”, opens April 2025 at the ArtRage Gallery.
Johnson’s play “Doors” was produced in May 2014, by the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company of Syracuse. She has written, directed, and produced children’s plays for the Onondaga Historical Association’s “History Drama Troupe” in Syracuse, NY and for several after school drama programs. During the 2021-23 school years, Vanessa created “The Griot Guides” program at Syracuse University’s Community Folk Art Gallery, teaching African-American history through storytelling, art, cultural lessons about the African Diaspora, and literature.
Several of Vanessa’s short stories can be found in a local publication – “Women’s Voices: An Anthology of Poetry and Short Stories” – Bialo Publications, Inc. She is the editor for a collection of stories written by youth from the Arts Academy at Syracuse University’s Community Folk Art Gallery “High Flown Words” 2022 – Wildebeest Publishing, available on Amazon. At present, she is working on two short story collections and a novel.
