New York-based artist Johanna Goodman has won numerous awards for her ongoing digital collage series Catalogue of Imaginary Beings. Her work has also been featured in multiple international print and digital publications. Drawing inspiration from Magical Realism, Surrealism, and Symbolism, Johanna has produced over 500 unique Beings.
Through the series, Johanna “explores a range of themes in popular culture including the role of the individual in fashion, in history, in the artistic imagination and more broadly, the collective consciousness.”
AMcE has been exhibiting Johanna’s work since its early days, and for our recent, all-women exhibition Force of Nature, we had the pleasure of displaying two of her life-size prints. One of those prints, Catalogue of Imaginary Beings, Plate No. 99, was featured on the cover of The Stranger’s 2025 Art + Performance Issue.
Goodman sat down (virtually) with AMcE Creative Arts’s Jo Munsen to explore her surreal creations and the world they inhabit.
The figures from your Catalogue of Imaginary Beings seem to exist in individual mythologies – or are they all interrelated? Can you describe the world/s they inhabit?
The figures from my Catalogue of Imaginary Beings series exist independently as well as a part of a larger whole. Each character has its own individual mythology or conceptual theme, some even as parts of sub-series within the larger Catalogue. But at the same time, they are all living together in a world in which complicated, larger than life, expressive. Self-possessed beings display or wear their inner essences as one would wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve. I like to think that they all live in harmony in a utopia where they coexist despite all their differences. It is convenient to have created an alternative reality for myself.
In creating a new being, what traditionally comes first? Does an image spark your imagination? Are there any surprising places or situations where you’ve found inspiration?
The process of creating a new being is always different. Sometimes something I see will spark my imagination and I’ll start shooting pictures and take it from there. Other times, I will be inspired by a trip. I’m currently making a series based on a trip I just took to New Orleans last week, and I’ve done series after visiting France, Los Angeles, Charleston. I live in New York and never stop making work inspired by New York. Sometimes I make collages because I feel spurred into action by world events such as the Covid pandemic, politics, environmental issues, women’s rights, reproductive rights, and Black Lives Matter among others. My voice is pretty much all visual. I share images I make to express my opinion. Otherwise, I am endlessly inspired by fashion, art history, crafts, people, nature, animals – kind of everything. It all finds its way into my work.
How does fashion influence your work?
Fashion is a huge influence on my work. Or the idea of fashion more than literal fashion? I really enjoy textiles and innovative sartorial ideas, but I am less a fan of shopping, trends or current styles. I love that I can design and produce infinite fashion collections, all two-dimensionally in my collages and that I need not follow any rules of physics, construction or marketability! My beings are the ultimate paper dolls for me. I’m a big thrifter/tag sale-er. And I do sew lots of my own clothes. I do a lot of quilting and appliqué, basically fabric collage. Lots of mixing of patterns and textures. Nothing “matches.”
Is your work more an act of construction or excavation—do you feel like you’re building a figure or uncovering one that was already there? Do you envision them fully formed or does each element inspire the next?
My work is more an act of construction than excavation, though I do love the idea of excavation. I never have much of a preconceived vision of what I’m going to make. For me the process of collage is all about going with the flow of the material I find – which I love and find a total relief! The idea of conceptualizing a successful piece in advance in a void is very intimidating. I really dig finding and using images that surprise me. Collecting and building with a bunch of accidental, serendipitous images often aggregates to create a new whole that somehow ends-up expressing something inside me that I didn’t know I wanted to express. A bunch of random, unexpected pieces can congeal into a perfect expression of a single idea. A very roundabout way of coming up with an idea. So much trial and error. Sheesh.
How do you feel your figures push boundaries of traditional representations of identity or beauty?
I hope that at least some of my work pushes the boundaries of traditional representations of identity and beauty. I want all my beings (most of them are women) to take up lots of space, be expressive, be big and loud and commanding, or big and quiet and still commanding. I’d like them all to be who they really are, not attempting to conform to any external beauty or cultural standards. But I know I have also absorbed so many of those external standards, despite my best intentions. The beauty and identity standards we are bombarded with are a force to be reckoned with. So, I am trying to reckon with them. One funny thing is that high heels do appear in lots of my work a lot but in reality, I don’t wear them. Not at all. Not for years. I don’t like how they look or feel on me! But they are such a part of the zeitgeist, so iconic. I guess once they are flattened-out on the page they are simply icons.
Are there any recent accomplishments or accolades you would like to share, or anything coming up that you are excited about?
Right now, I am very excited about a new direction the Imaginary Beings are taking. I’m working on a series of larger, painted Beings. The first half of my art career was all about oil painting and I’m excited to be marrying the collage and the paint in this new work.
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