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September 5, 2016 by Iskra Leave a Comment

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Iskra Fine Art Blog

the creative process | conversations with artists | the contemplative impulse in art

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At 18, in my first year in class at Cornish, Charl

At 18, in my first year in class at Cornish, Charles Stokes said: “To be an artist, first you must learn to visualize. Your assignment is to go home, close your eyes, and visualize an apple. Rotate it and observe how it looks from every direction, as though you were God and you had just designed this fruit. Then imagine cutting it into pieces and turn each piece in your mind’s eye. If you need to get in the bathtub, do.” A year later, my skin had turned permanently pink from baths, but I was beginning to be able to See. That moment when I really could imagine the apple from above, below, the side, and visualize the slices falling away was a revelation. The cherubim cheered. Today I can shut my eyes in any moment of boredom and see the apple rotate like a muffin on a dim sum tray, round and round, the highlights glinting.

Apples also nearly killed me. When I was 19, I worked for a month in the orchards of Orondo, and slept under the trees in a sleeping bag and little else. Each morning I woke to the drone of crop dusters and the pale white incandescence of pesticides sifting through the leaves. My water came from a galvanized pipe fed directly by the irrigation ditch. Me and Caesar Chavez? Solidaridad. I came back from the orchard with a stomach malady that defeated every doctor I saw. Over the ten years following I lost 32 pounds, and I had been slender to start. At 27 I came within three weeks of death. Over that decade I was tested for everything, and my body claimed an allergy to every food except the pinto bean. No amount of antibiotics or enzymes or the primitive curatives of those days worked. After this inexplicable and punishing siege on my health it took years to get back to food as a good idea. I lived on boiled carrots and rice. The one possible argument to inexplicable: every alternative medicine healer found indications of arsenic, a prime ingredient of pesticides and known disruptor of the digestive tract. (Continued in next comment, complete essay at link in bio.)

Exquisite work by @christinegedye @fountainheadgal

Exquisite work by @christinegedye @fountainheadgallery.

Experiments in juxtaposition. Yesterday I worked

Experiments in juxtaposition.

Yesterday I worked in the studio to some kind of divine mix of Raga and drone and hand pan drum and returned to the state of mind I’m here for.

This study of an eggshell is only incidentally an eggshell; it is any fragile thing regarded with love. I think of the days when there was an antique shop on every block and I would haunt them and find among the watering cans and spoons and rusted winches a lace handkerchief starched and embroidered with imagined daisies by some woman crossing the country in a covered wagon with a packet of seeds. I held the cloth up and watched clerestory light fall from the rafters and transform its quiet folds into something burning, heard the sounding bells of ships in the harbor, the train rumbling in the tunnel, people stumbling and laughing on the boardwalk.

Light is the keeper of history. As we walked out of the steel plant last week, steam mingled with clouds and enveloped the massive structures around us in softness. Just before my camera died, I took this picture of a steel door. On its face, the flag of an imagined country, stripped of warp and weft and left with only traces. As the world hangs on the edge, held by the flimsiest of props, each day aims another missile at certainty. We still have memory, and that may save us.

#TheFragilityProject

Slow Art. The beat helps tune out the Everything E

Slow Art. The beat helps tune out the Everything Else Going On. . .#graphitepencil

I am excited to be part of the annual open studio

I am excited to be part of the annual open studio tour for
Spotlight North 2026, Noon to 5 May 16+17!
Meet the artists of Shoreline, North Seattle,
and Lake Forest Park in their native habitat:

Robin Arnitz, Anna Wetzel Artz, Laura Brodax, Shruti Ghatak, Eva Isaksen, Amanda Knowles, Sarah Norsworthy, Paul Leavitt, Paul Lewing, Iskra Johnson, Dale Lindman, and Shoko Zama.

I will be showing new drawings and paintings influenced by nature and place, as well as ongoing print work, and several new card series. Many people have told me they would love to collect more but their walls are full, or they are moving into smaller spaces. In response, I have created new tiny works you can set on your desk or slip into the spice rack between the oregano and the thyme. I have always loved the intimacy of small work: It is the quietest most personal of conversations. These three pieces are from the hundreds of media studies I do to see “what happens if,” in an experimental state of mind. They are made with a combination of liquid graphite, pencil and paint, and presented like tiny one-of-a kind etchings. Contact me if you are interested in pre-purchase.
Link in bio to the Spotlight North Website. The map will be posted soon!

First glimpse of the Nucor Steel Plant. Probably t

First glimpse of the Nucor Steel Plant. Probably the most amazing photo shoot I have ever been on. It will take me months to know what to do with the hundreds of images from this amazing day. Thank you Seattle plein air painters for this rare opportunity. Thank God we had dedicated minders to keep us from falling off the stairs and to help us adjust to the three layers of gear, hard hat, ear coverings, goggles, vest (hint: you need all of them!)

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