Ruth Pitkanen Johnson, artist and educator, was born in 1908 in Oulu, Finland to The Reverend Matti Pitkanen and Elin Durchman Pitkanen. When Ruth Pitkanen was just three years old, her family moved to the United States and settled in the upper peninsula of Michigan where her father had been hired by the English Methodist Conference of Michigan as a minister. Ruth Pitkanen attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on scholarship, graduating in 1932 with a BA in art education. She struggled to find work until 1934, when her former roommate helped her secure a position at J.B. Young Junior High School in Davenport, Iowa. Pitkanen taught at the school until 1938, when she married Norman Johnson and they moved to Gambier, Ohio.

The couple moved again in the 1940s, this time to Iowa City, Iowa, to earn their masters degrees. During World War II, Norman Johnson was commissioned into the Navy. Ruth Johnson remained in Iowa City with their three children. Following the war, the family moved several times, living in Washington, Colorado and Minnesota before settling in Champaign, Illinois. Ruth Johnson taught drawing theory for thirteen years at the University of Illinois in Champaign, retiring in 1971. She and her husband then moved to Minnesota. They lived there until 1983, when they returned to Iowa City to be closer to a facility which could treat Norman Johnson for his illness, which had symptoms similar to Alzheimer's disease. Ruth Johnson became active at the Iowa City/Johnson County Senior Center, serving as volunteer art exhibit coordinator. She continued to be involved in the Senior Center after her husband's death in 1986. Ruth Johnson died in 1992.

Juliet Mattila was born to Ruth Pitkanen Johnson and Norman Johnson in 1942 in Fargo, North Dakota. She attended elementary school in Minneapolis, Minnesota and high school in Urbana, Illinois. Mattila went to the University of California, Berkeley earning a BA in 1963 and an MA in 1965. Juliet Mattila taught at Loyola University Chicago for several years. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1970. Mattila taught at the University of Rochester, focusing on English literature. Mattila was a student in the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, earning her MFA in Poetry in 1992. She then worked at the University of Iowa as the Director of Academic Advising Center until her retirement in 2000. Throughout her career, she taught several semesters of English classes and continued writing poetry. Mattila moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and focused on printmaking and photography. Juliet Mattila died in 2023.