Gordon Johnson
About Me:
I’m Cahuilla/Cupeno Indian and live on the Pala Indian Reservation. Good or bad, I’ve had a desultory approach to education. I studied philosophy, literature and film at UC Santa Cruz, journalism at UC Berkeley, communications at UC San Diego. I studied creative writing at Vermont College and got a master of fine arts in creative writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles.
For much of my life I’ve earned my living with my fingers on a keyboard. I worked at small Indian newspapers, the Associated Press in Los Angeles, I was a reporter for a small weekly in Fallbrook, editor of The Californian, a daily newspaper covering Southwest Riverside County, a feature writer and columnist for The Press-Enterprise, a 200,000 circulation newspaper serving the Inland Empire.
I have two books: Rez Dog Eat Beans and Fast Cars and Frybread, and I have poetry and short stories published in various periodicals.
I have four children and eight grandchildren who live nearby. My grandchildren ask for pickles from my icebox.
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My KCET.org Activities
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Iranian-born Reza Sepahdari makes art in Temecula's wine country. He believes in the role of the artist as a messenger of peace.
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Dime Stories filled a need for an open-mike venue in Temecula, a place where writers could get their words heard by an audience.
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For over 20 years, KUCR Indian Time Radio has been a point of pride in the Indian community, cementing their own place within Southern California's pop culture sphere.
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Native Voices at the Autry puts the spotlight on American Indian playwrights, helping them transition their culturally-inspired works into full-scale productions.
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For Joshua Tree-based musician Jimmy King, the blues is a mission to find meaning, a discovery of what matters, and an embrace of what's real.
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Tracy Lee Nelson is a skateboard artist, combining form and function in skateboard design that resonates with Indian themes.
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After a devastating fire in 2004, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony is being resurrected by community efforts in a secluded natural setting in Temecula.
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An expert on Day of the Dead history, Consuelo Flores builds altars to the deceased every year. But she contends that the tradition is about life, not death.
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Kumeyaay Indian artist Raymond Lafferty's art is in many ways a search for home. Bucking conventions all his life, he often felt alienated as an Indian trying to figure out where he belonged with his own people.
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Cecelia Ramos Linayao is a street artist heading up a small team working on the featured panel commemorating the 10th Anniversary of ArtSplash in San Diego.
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Gerald Clarke Jr. refuses to be defined like an artifact on a museum shelf by his Indian heritage. He seeks to let the past inform the present, but not restrict it.
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Inside The Merc in Temecula, there's no sense of time, only time signatures. Within the old brick walls and open-beam ceiling, time and place are figments -- it's music that matters.
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Like his Greek forebears, Max DeMoss Jr., now himself 65 years old, is an artist who specializes in forging bronze into classic works of art. Some of them small and intricate, some huge and monolithic.
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In Southern California, Sprague is a guitarist extraordinaire. He's played on some 200 albums and produced over 100 in his home studio, called SpragueLand, in Encinitas.
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American Indian Catherine Nelson-Rodriguez is an artist from the trenches. Persevering through tremendous physical and emotional hardship, she paints without pretense of the pain in her heart and her mind.
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Ceramic artist Richard White's work comes in all shapes and sizes, from pottery to performing fired-in-place exhibits. Always an innovator, Richard continues to mine the creative process for inspiration.
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Robert Freeman's art is a broken mirror reflecting both his idiosyncratic vision of the universe and his jagged interiors. In the Indian art world, he's big time.
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James Luna, a Luiseño from the La Jolla Indian Reservation in north San Diego County, is a performance artist specializing in the unexpected. He considers it his mission to challenge boundaries.
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In the mystery world, T. Jefferson Parker has established himself as a California golden boy. Many of his murderous plots unfold in Orange County, where the landscape is awash in blondes and bikinis.
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First -- curiosity. The simple incongruity forms a question mark. A big ol' bass and a high-pitched mandolin, side by side? It's like throwing a growling mastiff in with a mewling kitten. But then listen to the music, and be convinced. Meet MandoBasso.
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Woody Guthrie, father of American folk music, is dead. Joel Rafael, 62, a folkie from Valley Center in north San Diego County, labors to keep his music alive.
Recent Actions from Gordon Johnson
No recommendations yet.
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Iranian-born Reza Sepahdari makes art in Temecula's wine country. He believes in the role of the artist as a messenger of peace.
-
Dime Stories filled a need for an open-mike venue in Temecula, a place where writers could get their words heard by an audience.
-
For over 20 years, KUCR Indian Time Radio has been a point of pride in the Indian community, cementing their own place within Southern California's pop culture sphere.
-
Native Voices at the Autry puts the spotlight on American Indian playwrights, helping them transition their culturally-inspired works into full-scale productions.
-
For Joshua Tree-based musician Jimmy King, the blues is a mission to find meaning, a discovery of what matters, and an embrace of what's real.
-
Tracy Lee Nelson is a skateboard artist, combining form and function in skateboard design that resonates with Indian themes.
-
After a devastating fire in 2004, the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony is being resurrected by community efforts in a secluded natural setting in Temecula.
-
An expert on Day of the Dead history, Consuelo Flores builds altars to the deceased every year. But she contends that the tradition is about life, not death.
-
Kumeyaay Indian artist Raymond Lafferty's art is in many ways a search for home. Bucking conventions all his life, he often felt alienated as an Indian trying to figure out where he belonged with his own people.
-
Cecelia Ramos Linayao is a street artist heading up a small team working on the featured panel commemorating the 10th Anniversary of ArtSplash in San Diego.
