Yielbonzie Johnson

Yielbonzie Charles Johnson was born at Tulsa’s Negro community hospital- Moton Memorial- at 12:26 PM on August 26, 1952, two years before Brown v. Board. His birth certificate states that his mother (Sallie) was in the delivery room for 20 minutes before he breathed his first breath. Legend has it that Sallie walked him back home once the Oklahoma temp settled to 90 degrees. No sweat. These were mythical times. 

The new racial mountain he confronted was chiseled out of a global Black liberation movement. The period was marked by another end of American innocence ushered in with assassinations, Vietnam and cultural revolution. In answer to James Baldwin’s crucial question, “Who wants to be integrated into a burning house?” Yielbonzie made his way to art through engagement with the “community mental health” movement specifically and what was generally referred to as “the human potential movement”. 

In 1974 in Tulsa, he met and was tutored by and showed with Tulsa Cherokee artist Inez Running Rabbit. From this time through the 1980s he continued his self-directed quest for the healing capacity of artistic production through clay, painting, carving and photography. 

In 1986 he received his Masters degree in Divinity at the Unitarian seminar of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. In 1987 he was ordained into the Unitarian Universalist ministry and for more than thirty years worked in a variety of contexts and cities organizing and teaching worship arts and promoting art as an essential component of healthy and liberating communities. Included here were being the organizing minister of Church of the Restoration – Unitarian Universalist in Tulsa and four years as Associate Professor of Ministry at Starr King School in Berkeley where he was the project manager of a national conference, REIMAGINING WORSHIP.

In 2013 he retired from active ministry and returned to Tulsa devoting himself to his artistic practice which includes photography, mixed media visual art, and 3D art in clay and wood. Guided by immersion in African Traditional Religion he seeks through word and image to make the invisible visible and tangible though word and image.

Lives on the Line

Lives on the Line is a visual arts exhibition that explores lineage, genealogy, and the black artist community of Tulsa. During the exhibition window, Black Artists Collaborating will present a series of workshops exploring the history of the black community through their genes in collaboration with the genealogist. Located within the historic boundaries of Greenwood, the foundation of where the African-American community in Tulsa began.