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Charmian Johnson

Canadian artist and independent curator

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ62018257
Source-derived summary

Charmian Johnson (1939 – July 20, 2020) was a Canadian artist and potter based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Life and career

Charmian Johnson was born in Pouce Coupe, BC in 1939. She attended Delta Central School in Delta, BC then the University of British Columbia to study ceramics from 1967-69. She studied under Glenn Lewis and Mick Henry.

Johnson worked as a high school teacher in Creston, BC, as well as an elementary school teacher in West Vancouver, BC. In 1969, Johnson worked as a visiting professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Saskatchewan. Following this, she became a regular guest lecturer at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in the Faculty of Education studio program from 1971-1977. Johnson left her position at UBC in 1977 and decided to dedicate herself to ceramics.

Artistic practice

Johnson began exhibiting her work in 1979. She primarily worked in the medium of ceramics and also worked with ink on paper drawings and painting. Having apprenticed with Glenn Lewis and Mick Henry during her graduate studies at UBC, her work is directly tied to their philosophies and linked to Bernard Leach and Japanese Pottery.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Charmian Johnson” is canadian artist and independent curator. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Charmian, Johnson and Canadian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 2020, 1967, 1969—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1939-01-01. For this dossier, Charmian, Johnson and Canadian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “canadian artist and independent curator” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62018257. VIAF identifies the subject as 267713786. The Library of Congress control number is no2012127025. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2020, 1967 and 1969.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Charmian Johnson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Charmian Johnson primary sources, Charmian Johnson archive and Charmian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Charmian Johnson”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Charmian Johnson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.