Bio

Sisc (Sissy) Stella L. D. Johnson spent her youth living throughout Tennessee, Maryland, and Virginia. She currently resides in Manassas, Virginia, with her husband, Ben.

Johnson earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Art and Visual Technology, with a Concentration in Photography, from the School of Art, College of Visual and Performing Arts, at George Mason University. She is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art (MFA) at Maine Media College (May 2027) and an Executive MBA at the Quantic School of Business and Technology (May 2026).

Johnson’s work combines photography and text to document personal and collective experiences, fostering empathy, respect, and compassion for self and others.

In 2021, she was awarded an OSCAR research grant to expand access to the arts by teaching photography and writing to court-involved youth. Through this initiative, she partnered with Fairfax County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court to lead summer workshops in residential probation programs.

Johnson received a scholarship in 2019 to attend the Position & Condition workshop and photography portfolio review with Irina Rosovsky and Mark Steinmetz in Athens, Georgia. In 2019, she performed at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden as part of Katie Kehoe’s Artist and Climate Change project.

She has served as a juror for the Regional Scholastic Art Awards (Fairfax County Public Schools, 2022). Her work has been exhibited in group shows and juried competitions across Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., and in California—earning first place in two local exhibitions (2019 and 2021). Her work has appeared in Artistonish Contemporary Art Magazine (2021) and in the College of Visual and Performing Arts Annual Report (2019–2020).