With their unjuried approach to showing art, cooperative artists' groups play a role in any city's art scene, but groups like Untitled and Plowhaus seem to figure particularly prominently in Nashville. This may be due to the small number of commercial galleries and professional artists here—but whatever the reason for their influence, these groups help give the local scene an open, accepting ethos.

Erika Johnson, who had a solo show at the Plowhaus Artists' Cooperative gallery last week, is a good example of how these groups improve not just the amount, but the level of artistic expression in Nashville. She framed her show as a reflection of the shyness that led her to make art in secret for years, until she mustered the courage in 2003 to attend a meeting of the Untitled group. This might not seem like such a big step, but as someone without the sanction of much formal art training, she says, "I was afraid people would think what I was doing was dumb. The fact that Untitled is unjuried and welcoming was so important." She put a piece in Untitled's fall 2003 show, sold it, and has increased her involvement with the group ever since, recently becoming its part-time paid administrator. Around the time she made her way to Untitled, she met Franne Lee at Plowhaus and was invited to join the East Nashville-based co-op.

Johnson is primarily a photographer, but collecting and assembling is at the core of her artistic practice. One of her previous works documented semi-anonymous, mostly stenciled street art that she came across in Nashville. In last week's show, many of the pieces utilized transparencies made from found photographs. With this sort of artistic practice, where the artist does not compose each image, the selection and organization must show insight or deal with compelling subject matter if the work is to rise above purely personal and sentimental interest. To a great extent, Johnson met that challenge.

The core piece of the exhibit, "for the shy," consisted of three layers of transparencies strung on filaments across one wall in the gallery. A narrative of lesbian identity emerged from a series of images, including old photos of women singly and in pairs, doorways, flowers, anatomical diagrams and texts. The piece in essence answered the question, "Where do gay women come from?" Most of the older photos seemed like "everywomen," but there were also vintage erotic nudes of women together, and a striking photo of a boyish woman dressed in men's clothes. Contemporary color photos showed scenes of women in gay pride marches. This transition from anonymous figures of earlier eras to contemporary women out openly in the streets mapped the movement from a suppressed gay identity into a public community that emerged after the Stonewall riot in New York in 1969.

Other material filled in more of the narrative. Anatomical diagrams described male and female reproductive systems. One pair of pictures showed the words "Girls Entrance" and "Boys" carved in stone over a doorway. Images like these establish the idea of biological and social differences, seemingly immutable. Then there were the erotic photos, and text transparencies that reproduced descriptions of two women's alleged sexual encounters from the transcript of an early 19th century British libel trial. Johnson didn't skip over the obvious and concrete reality of lesbianism's roots in the sexual desire of women for women.

The images floated together in front of the wall, which reflected an open-ended, never-finalized narrative of homosexuality. Like other artists, Johnson uses vintage photographs because of the pleasure people get from them and the memories they evoke of our own family photos. The anonymous women could be someone in our own family tree, maybe that great-aunt who never married. The use of found images had added relevance here because of the legacy of appropriation within gay and lesbian history. Not permitted culture and institutions of their own, they adopted what was available, like body-building magazines or the West Side YMCA in Manhattan.

Construction of a narrative is critical to anyone's sense of identity, but it is of particularly vital concern to gays and lesbians because their identity and existence were denied for so long. Johnson feels that "one part of the experience of being queer is a desire for and a culture of narrative." There is both the personal narrative, how a person came to know themselves as gay, and the larger historical and social lineage that provides roots for the newly discovered part of herself. If the need to build such narratives is obviously urgent for gays and lesbians, all of us require them. Evangelical Christians share the story of how they were saved; psychotherapy patients reconstruct their intimate family history.

While much of Johnson's work does not explicitly address gay themes, she does feel her sexuality influences her work. One place it shows is in a theme of codes. As she puts it, "When you first come out, you want to know if there's a secret handshake. Of course, there's not, but there are unspoken codes and secrets, ways of recognizing people that are subtle and pleasurable." The images in "for the shy" contain hints, like the note on the photo of a woman that reads, "To Virginia with loads of love." It could be an innocent inscription, or a hidden message to a lover. One text page discusses Mormonism, a reference to Johnson's family religious background.

The other notable piece in the show was called "shy/share," which involved viewers in an interactive process. Johnson made a series of small images and objects, mounted each in a plastic envelope, and invited people to bring something of similar size to trade. They could take what appealed to them and leave what they brought, along with a note describing the item or image. The participants contributed to the process of gathering images, and the response on opening night was enthusiastic.

Much of the rest of the show did not register as well as "for the shy" and "shy/share." The success of "for the shy" in particular makes a strong case that artists are well-advised to go as far as they can into material that concerns them viscerally.

In this day and age, it is not critical to identify an artist who is gay as such. Gay people and gay artists are not rare, and to a great extent a gay artist is just an artist. But gay voices can bring out different qualities of experience, and it is worth looking for them and hearing them within our own community. Erika Johnson casts light on the urgency of narrative, and the ways in which sexual desire contributes to personhood. It shows the value of Untitled and Plowhaus that they provided the avenue to bring her voice out of the artistic closet.