ARTIST / WHO ART YOU

Daniel Ryan Johnston

Textiles, wearables & accessible design

A textile artist and accessibility researcher exploring bodily experience through wearables and embroidered sculpture.

Daniel Ryan Johnston, portrait from NYU ITP. · Image source ↗

Practice & background

Daniel Ryan Johnston is a Brooklyn-based textile artist, creative technologist and accessibility researcher. NYU ITP describes a practice combining puppets, wearable technology and machine-embroidered sculpture, informed by his experiences of body image, mental health and psoriatic arthritis.

His training spans fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology, arts and media management at Columbia College Chicago, and an MPS in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Garment construction and interactive technology meet within this interdisciplinary background.

NYU Tandon lists him as a principal instructor for Making Fashion Accessible. The program develops clothing and tools with disabled community members, exploring digital embroidery, 3D-printed textile tools, laser cutting and adapted sewing or knitting machines.

In the Art Value Lab interview, a pain-tracking glove and a thread-based hand sculpture connect data with bodily narrative. Read alongside his research, the project raises two linked questions: how to express difficult experiences, and how to support people in continuing to make.

Looking at the work

Textiles, free-motion embroidery, wearables, inflatable structures, LEDs and participatory accessible design. Bodily experience and the tools that enable making are both subjects of the work.

IN THE ARTIST’S WORDS

“to adapt the tools, not the person.”

Explore the conversation ↗

A few words to look with

Wearable technology

Technology worn on the body, such as clothing with sensors or electronics. Beyond function, it raises questions of comfort, expression, access and user choice.

Accessibility

Design that enables people with different bodily, sensory and cognitive experiences to access, understand and participate. It benefits from users’ own knowledge and involvement in decisions.

Textile & fibre art

Art using threads, fibres, cloth or related structures through weaving, stitching, embroidery or unconventional materials. The time and bodily labour of making can also be meaningful.

Works & further reading

Continue with the artist’s own work and institutional sources.

Artist website ↗

Profile based on the sources listed above; the conversation informs the viewing questions and work guides.