Minnesota artist Joanna Manning works in various disciplines including painting, printmaking, sculpture, book arts and ceramics to communicate ideas of presence, being, and becoming. Currently she is interested in how artworks become an environment to hold natural and elemental beauty. For Manning’s art practice she gleans creative headspace during daily walks. Rain or shine she and her family go for a walk and often find interesting things that they want to enjoy at home. With this purpose in mind, she started making paintings about the hopes and prayers she thought and heard. The abstracted forms themselves reflect things she sees: flower buds, twigs, rocks, birds, and her son’s little hand she holds. Investigations of the organic forms unify the material and immaterial, creating a space for a third meaning to come into being–a transformed sense of an integrated self as part of the whole, alive in the natural world.

Manning received her BFA in Art at Bethel University, St. Paul, MN in 2020. Manning teaches adults and children art programs in her community including Northern Clay Center and Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Manning is published as a featured artist in Revelations of the Artist by Art Serve International and has work in various midwest galleries, including a solo exhibition in Faribault, MN 2022. Born in Detroit, Michigan she now lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband and baby.