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Celebrate the Beauty of Swans: Holiday Print Sale, Twenty Percent off!

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Navigation ©Iskra Johnson

A big thank you to the friends and collectors who came out to my open studio and party November 16th! You made the year a great one, and work continues to go out the door, as those who could not make the open house stop by to visit. There were many requests for the swans to appear as cards, and as promised, they are now live, in The Swans Suite in my shop. All of the works are available as larger prints as well. A few of the swans are available only as larger prints. I may make a second Swans stationary collection as time goes on.

As a holiday thank you I am offering a 20% discount in my shop from now through the Solstice. If you have had your eye on a larger piece this is your chance to save big on any purchase over $150, cards excluded. Enter SOLSTICE24 at check out.

A note on upcoming price increases: Due to the inflation of costs for ink, paper and postage, I will be raising prices to catch up next year. This is one of your last chances to purchase cards at the current rate of 6 for $33

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New Photographic Art from England

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Blue Swan on the River Wensum Swan in garland of branches
Blue Swan (The River Wensum)  ©Iskra Johnson
 
I have been home from England just over a month, and I am still in a state of wonder and dislocation. Thirty perfect days abroad, and now – insert quandary emoticon– normal life. This post will share a few first highlights of the trip and a glimpse of new work, more of which can be seen in this portfolio under Photography. 
 

I had many reasons for making the journey to England, after 30 years away. Any one of the reasons is a novella, which is why I am thinking of creating a new blog devoted to travel. Where to even begin? Perhaps with the question posed last week by friends who had just returned from Scandinavia and Prague: why England? To which I replied: The Wind in the Willows. That classic children’s book about Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad and their bucolic life along the river shaped my idea from the age of 6 of what countryside should look like. I was a child of the wide open west, where barbed wire and naked fenceposts divided the fields, you could drown in the murky depths of a horse trough, and a volcanic mountain filled the eastern door of the barn. Our river was a quarter mile down a steep cliff littered with rusted barrels and stalked by coyotes and mountain lions. 
 
My father gave me the Wind in the Willows when I entered 1st grade. I would sit in bed in the farmhouse and run my fingers over the illustrated endpapers, tracing a green quilt of soft hedgerows, a river you could easily row a boat down, a tiny bridge, a weir, and Pan’s Island, where, in Chapter 7, Rat, Mole, (and every susceptible child) could be awed by The Mystery. Page 133 still holds a four leaf clover and the browned paper on which I wrote out Rat’s failed attempt to describe, in words, the wordless presence of god. So yeah, I went to England to find that. It may explain why I could not stop following the swans. (Click on any print image to see details in shop.)

White Swan on the Avon River fine art print
White Swan on the Avon ©Iskra Johnson

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Iskra Summer Shows 2024

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Looking At You, mixed process print, variable sizes, © Iskra Johnson

I’ve just dropped new work off at SAM Gallery for the upcoming show, “Splash!” opening August 10, from 2-4 PM. Work from my Immersions series will be included with water-inspired works from SAM Gallery artists Cara Jaye, Joe Max Emminger, Andy Eccleshall and Kate Protage. 

While I am in England a show based on Seattle landscape featuring four of my industrial and maritime works will open at Chatwin Arts. Keep your eye on their Instagram for the opening!

Eventide, © Iskra Johnson

Downtown was beautiful this morning. Trucks roared, dumpsters clanged, fish flew and tourists flocked the waterfront. Shifting double exposures refracted from windows in the sky. Pigeons! There is a palpable excitement this week as Seattle Art Fair opens and greets the art spirit.

When I got home there was a note from Seattle Office of Arts and Culture about Hope Corps. I’m sharing it here, in hopes you will respond or pass it along. This is a promising sign of new opportunities for artists in the city:

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) invites individual artists, cultural producers, arts administrators, creative workers, community groups, and arts and cultural organizations to apply to Hope Corps.

You can apply by proposing projects that generate career opportunities for the local creative workforce, and contribute to the well-being of Seattle’s downtown community with community-driven projects, events, performances, and more.

Envisioned as an economic recovery program for Seattle’s creative workforce, Hope Corps connects under- and unemployed artists, creative workers, and culture keepers with career opportunities that benefit the public. The 2025 Hope Corps program is part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, and funding will go towards projects that employ creative workers through activations in Seattle’s downtown neighborhoods:

Belltown, Central Downtown, Chinatown-International District, Denny Triangle, Pioneer Square, Stadium District.

Proposed projects should be unique events or activations, taking place in 2025 in street-level, accessible, outdoor or otherwise publicly visible spaces that provide engaging experiences for the public and bring audiences downtown.

Grants range from $5,000 – $50,000 to support creative worker wages and project expenses.

If you do nothing else in the next few days, do go swimming! And if you aren’t at the lake, see you at the Art Fair…

The Sailboat New Media by Iskra

Open Studio Tours: Creating Sustainable Ecosystems for the Arts

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Shruti Ghatak’s home painting studio

Creating a Sustainable Arts Ecosystem

The word “sustainability” is everpresent today in discussions of climate change and global warming. Less often do we hear it applied to the visual arts, which are themselves part of an ecosystem. Community support for the visual arts tends to be scattershot and fitful, reliant on the generosity of funding organizations and a handful of collectors (like Seattle’s departed Paul Allen) who, though much appreciated, can change their affections without warning or predictability. With state and local governments facing recurring deficits, arts funding is usually the last to be added and the first to be cut. Large ongoing grants from foundations most often go to established organizations like museums, theaters, schools and community associations; even if an artist competes successfully for the rare individual grant, these only fund a fraction of expenses and rarely provide ongoing support.

The path to success in art is rarely direct. Developing a meaningful body of work as an artist can require years of experimentation, skill building and detours into work that may not succeed financially but which is necessary to creative growth. For this process artists need time, a work space and opportunities to test their work in the marketplace. Artists need regular sales of their work and a growing collector base to thrive.

Today the web is increasingly accepted as the replacement for traditional art sales venues, with claims that social media and online shops make galleries obsolete. Granted, success has come to select superstars, but increasingly social media favors “influencers,” brand ambassadors and advertisers, and not actual artists, (AKA “content creators”). The algorithms of Instagram and Facebook surface primarily the minority who are already famous and successful, while offering less and less visibility to artists who need a reliable showcase where their work can connect to buyers. [Read more…]

Summer Solstice Flower Suite

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Chiaroscuro of the Garden

The Summer Solstice is a day to revel in color and light. Only a few peonies bloom in my dappled shade, but for a week I live in the intoxication of their perfume. Placed with a stray branch of mock orange, the blaze of peony against the darkness of night seems like a Solstice anthem, holding all the mysteries of darkness and light. When I was a child I thought the longest day of summer was July 15th, in the middle of those three calendar months I filled in with yellow crayons. The adult knows better. I could start brooding now about the coming darkness. Or I could take a walk in the garden . . .   

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