Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930, Augusta, Ga., U.S.) is an American painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He began his career as a commercial artist, producing displays for New York City shop windows. In 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition, a rousing success. The paintings Johns went on to produce depict commonplace, two-dimensional subjects such as flags, targets, maps, numbers, and letters of the alphabet. He was able to raise these objects to the level of icons through his paint handling and manipulation of surface texture, which he obtained through the encaustic technique.