By Mia Saavedra

I drive down NW 2nd Avenue towards Faktura Gallery and pass St. Mary’s Cathedral, a church that was founded in 1929 by a group of men and women from the Little River Mission Club. St. Mary’s is beautiful yet awkward in Little Haiti’s landscape of run down warehouses and the sober living facility next door. This church is the namesake of the St. Mary’s Art District – the area in Little Haiti in which Faktura Gallery is located. I am greeted at the gallery by owner Jacquelyn Johnston and four barking dogs ranging in sizes and ages. She is dog sitting, she explains. I’m not surprised - after all, my dog came to me from one of her rescue efforts. It’s all part of the D.I.Y., socially conscious vibe at Faktura Gallery, which puts the space in a league of its own.

Faktura Gallery operates independently from the more well-known art districts in Miami, and it is mainly because of its owner, Jacquelyn Jackson Johnston. While only in her early 20’s, Johnston already boasts an impressive background. Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Johnston spent most of her young life in Chile, and also lived in S. Korea as well as Venezuela. As a teenager, Johnston was recruited to join the prestigious arts boarding school program at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. Instead of signing on the dotted line, she headed towards their competition, the equally as notable boarding school for the arts, Walnut Hill in Natick, Massachusetts. Then came Miami; U.M. to be exact. It didn’t last very long. “I studied at the University of Miami during my first year of college and hated it – I just wasn’t ready for Miami”, explains Johnston. Instead, she found her niche at Columbia University’s Barnard College in New York City. Johnston studied under some of the most influential art critics and historians of our time, and it proved to make her very well-rounded in the arts. “I was a double major – Art History and Visual Arts with a focus on Linguistic Anthropology”, says Johnston. You’d think with all the background and training Jacquelyn Johnston would be some hoity-toity art chick. But no; she’s cool, she’s down to earth, and she is a girl on a mission to make and provide the public with good art, and to make it as approachable as possible for anyone who is interested and open to it. When asked why she chose to open a gallery instead of being represented by one, Johnston is pretty matter of fact: “All the galleries in Miami I met with wanted my work to be focused, they wanted it to be a particular style. I felt like I wasn’t going to fit in because I’m eclectic, and I’m much happier when I work that way.” After spending quite some time on a friend’s couch, Johnston found the current space that Faktura inhabits. “ As soon as I saw this place, I realized really quickly that it would be a good space to have a bunch of artists come and show their work”, she says. She laughs and adds, “I mean, I got an art studio before I got an apartment!” As is the case for most artists, the need to create is a basic one, so while Johnston didn’t come to Miami thinking gallery, she did realize that her background made her a good candidate to run one, so she decided to launch Faktura, feature her own art as well as that of other artists, and give it a go.



Faktura Gallery started in April of 2005 with its inaugural show featuring the work of Johnston and artists Sven Barth, Ann Everton, and Santiago Rubino. Its last show, M is for Miami, featured works on canvas by Johnston and artist Christian Alexander. Alexander is also a business owner, running the clothing label Gentleman Bastards. The basis of the show is how Miami has influenced each of them, and how their work has changed (or not) by having to run and support a business, as well as having to create work. In December Faktura opens what is now its Art Basel tradition – Pimp my Kart- an exhibit where artists get creative with your basic shopping cart. The idea came from a homeless man Johnston saw one day on the street. He had ingenuously crafted a bed out of two shopping carts and was laying on it, all his possessions stored underneath him. “I’ve been close to being homeless”, Johnston says. “ Not exactly homeless, but pretty close. So I thought about what I would do if I had no place to live, nowhere to store my art. How would I adapt to that? What would I create in order to take all my materials with me and still survive? It’s an exploration of art-making, thinking about homelessness, and of course, it’s the exact opposite of what Basel is.” And so Pimp my Kart was born. There are 28 artists to date on the show’s roster, and Johnston has had each sign a contract guaranteeing the delivery of a cart. “Last year I organized a lot of press, a lot of P.R. and in the end, many artists didn’t deliver a cart,” says Johnston. At this year’s show, there will be a five dollar charge at the door, and proceeds will benefit Miami-Dade County’s Community Partnership for the Homeless. Community is, after all, what Faktura Gallery is mainly about.

“ It was hard initially,” Johnston says about the start of the gallery. “I had a lot of support at first, and then all that fell through, so I just stood here with a hammer in my hand thinking “Ok, now what?” Johnston works a day job in order to be able to support the gallery financially, but she also gets help from what she lovingly refers to as “The Faktura Mafia”, a group of artists and supporters that help make the gallery survive outside of Johnston’s financial efforts and sales. Part of what makes Faktura unique is the way the work shown comments on the art world itself. For example, while Pimp my Kart goes against the commodity culture of Basel, Dope Art comments on drug use within the art world. What exactly is it, you ask? Dope Art are little baggies filled with what look like hits of acid, but are really small, one-of-a-kind pieces of art made by Johnston and her artists, sold for $5 bucks a pop. Some people have been turned off by the idea of relating art to drugs, but this kind of subversion is what sets the shows and projects at Faktura Gallery apart from the other guys. From having local graffiti artists create large-scale murals, to selling baggies of art, Faktura Gallery is really working to create its own definition of what art is and what it should do for its audience.

Back to the dogs. One black and brown mixed breed starts a fight with smaller dog and gets sent to its cage by Jacquelyn. A little one nips at my ankles and shoelaces with its surprisingly sharp teeth. In the back there is a mother with a whole litter of puppies, growling when the others get too close. “People ask me how I can work with all these dogs around, but actually they keep me sane. Otherwise, I’d just work all the time”, says Johnston. These dogs are the inspiration for Faktura Projekts – the gallery’s non-profit division that will work towards finding homes for stray animals, as well as engaging in other community-service oriented projects. There will be art shows and exhibits that will be dedicated to raising funds for Faktura Projekts, and in the end it is simply another way for art to be synonymous with community, and for artists to interact with the public under the idea that what they create can make a difference. Artists have the power to not only create beautiful pieces, but also to be activists, with their brushes, spray cans, cameras or whichever medium they choose in hand. They are truly the beginning of Johnston’s vision of what she calls “an art-aided Miami”.

Faktura Gallery
7128 NW 2nd Ct
305.758.9005
www.fakturagallery.com