About Johanna Rae Wyss

Johanna Rae Wyss is a locally invested, internationally minded artist and food professional. Raised in rural Illinois, she is based in the Chicagoland area and wanders wildly. Not one to be complacent, her disciplines range wildly from sculptor, painter, airbrush specialist, set builder, makeup artist, performance artist, teacher, musician, costumer, cake decorator, food scientist, writer, and more.

Predominant motifs that can be found in her work are sociopolitical friction, unhampered lesbian jubilation, allegorical folklore and sardonic digestion of US pop culture.

Satanism, mid/late 20th century imagery, the natural world, and historically feminine iconography are frequent vehicles used to convey her ideas.

She is currently melding these elements into works that blur the lines between cake decorating, textiles, and sculpture. Her recent series, Day Terrors, depicts current social struggles through symbolic foam and clay taxidermy analogs. Meanwhile her current project, “Soft Slaughter”, retraces the rosy nostalgia and adolescent traumas encountered growing up rural through soft sculpture reimaginings of the freshly gutted game animals that hung in her childhood garage.