Art on a roll at Michigan Avenue festival

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Photographer J.J. Johansen (left) shows off a print titled “What floats your boat?” at Art Fest Michigan Avenue on Sunday. | Emily Moon/Sun-Times

Danish artist J.J. Johansen takes things literally. Using model figures from train stores, he illustrates his favorite phrases with scenes smaller than his hand.

What floats your boat? Johansen balanced a half-an-inch figure on a pint of Guinness and snapped a photograph.

Police officers investigating a round of brie became “Who cut the cheese?”

Figures skiing down a mountain of toilet paper: “On a roll.”

“I’m not American, so when I learned English, I learned idioms,” the photographer said. “I always loved them.”

Johansen creates the scenes from real objects on his dining room table, shoots with a macro lens and runs the result by a test audience — his 10- and 12-year-old daughters, who sometimes respond, “Daddy’s a little crazy.”

“If I smile when I’m doing it, I know it’s going to be popular,” he said.

Photographer J.J. Johansen’s “On a roll” print hangs outside his award-winning booth at Art Fest Michigan Avenue.

Photographer J.J. Johansen’s “On a roll” print hangs outside his award-winning booth at Art Fest Michigan Avenue.

Johansen brought his work to Art Fest Michigan Avenue this weekend for a three-day showcase featuring 107 artists, who sold art made from Hamilton playbills, beer bottles and 1893 Chicago World’s Fair memorabilia. The photographer won a “best of category award” — and the admiration of festival-goers like 8-year-old Callie Peters.

A “Star Wars” fan, Callie favored a print of two Lego stormtroopers who dwarf their human counterparts. “It’s funny,” she said.

Callie and her parents, from Arlington Heights, walked away with two pieces. “We collect fun art,” Shirley Peters said. “I like the perspective.”

At Richard Borden’s Shibumi silks booth, 9-year-old Colbie Schumacher made her own art — a marbled silk scarf. Dripping acrylic paint into a narrow tub of water, she arranged the dye in a psychedelic pattern and lowered the fabric into the tub. The result: a colorful new accessory, which would show off her favorite hue, rainbow.

Whether creating or collecting, festival director Amy Amdur said she believes art should be fun. “Figure out your budget and buy what you love,” she said. “It does make you feel good.”

Johansen says his work makes him happy, too. For his “That’s how the cookie crumbles” shoot, he constructed a mine out of chocolate chip cookies. “And after that,” he said, “I ate them.”

Colbie Schumacher creates her own marbled silk scarf at Art Fest Michigan Avenue on July 23.

Colbie Schumacher creates her own marbled silk scarf at Art Fest Michigan Avenue on July 23.

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