Photo: Elin Nerpin

Swedish designer & art worker with an eye for innovation and perfection.

With a contrasts of tenderness and strength, delicate hands and rough iron mesh I form, by hand, exclusive artwork, each piece unique.

I live and work in a small village in Sweden, and my passion is to shape sculptures out of steel mesh with my bare hands. I made my first sculpture 2001, only seventeen years old. A few years after that, I started my firm Ateljé Johanna Forsberg and I’ve been working full time as an artist since then. I started off making a sculpture for a friend but today my customers are worldwide. My greatest source of inspiration comes from the people I meet, freedom fighters who has an inner strength. A glow of power, both strong and weak. Hard metal that I shape into smooth curves, is the perfect material to enlighten just that.

I first got in contact with steel mesh when I attended high school and studied arts&design. We got to try out different kinds of materials. Steel mesh was one of them. But we merly used it as a basis to brace up the sculpture you where working on. During my second year at highschool I got a question from one of my friends. They wanted something for their home and they asked me If I could make something. I got 100% freedom to do whatever I wanted. Since I love doing 3-dimensional works I directly started to think how I could make something that could stand out and melt in in their room at the same time. I got to think about that steel mesh. Perhaps I could make something of that?

I went to the hardware store and got myself some steel mesh. I started bending and after a while i realized that this could be something really interesting. My first plan was to use the mesh as I had done before, as a form. Now I stopped in the middle of the process and realized I was finished. The bare mesh was simply enough. And it has proven to be ever since that day in february 2001. 2004 I had my first exhibition and shortley after that I started my firm Studio Johanna Forsberg and I have been workning full time as an artist since then.