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Introducing the Travelers Suite | A New Affordable Print Series for the Holidays

December 4, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

River House landscape by Iskra
“River House,” Archival pigment print © Iskra Johnson

Greetings from the road! I have begun to travel for the first time in years, with my eyes far away. I hardly remember how to pack my bags, much less a passport, so I am starting with what’s close, Portland and Victoria, within easy flight for a windblown gull. It has been a difficult couple of months. Many of you know that my mother passed away in September. It was a wrenching loss, and her life and passing are chronicled in my remembrance here and in the obituary written by the New York Times. My mother was a writer and activist, and her last book, published at 85, was her traveler memoir, titled Seeing for Myself: A Political Traveler’s Memoir. This coming year is dedicated to her memory, and to her adventurous spirit.

From a series called “Traveler”, the new prints here are inspired by the mind state of journeys far and near. Portals, gates, trains, sky, the glimpse from the window as scenes overlay with memory and time and possibility expands. These are multiple exposure images begun in my phone as a glimpse of “something” – captured in a split second and later reflected upon. A double exposure is an acknowledgment that we are never in just one place in time. The exposure is random, but not. Always there is the chance of unexpected poetry in how images blend and collide. You can ask yourself questions like: is the composition balanced? Is there a contrast of dark and light and shapes and mood? Or you can ask the existential version: 1) When is a splatter a flight of birds? 2) When is a blur a memory? 3) When is a memory a lie? 4) When is a lie the truth…..

The new series is printed in affordable editions of 50 with an image size of 12 x 16 on 17 x 22 sheets of German Etching. The prints are sold unframed in my shop for $150 including shipping. I welcome studio visits for local friends and art lovers. Take a look and let me know what you think. (Click through on each image to view large scale and in situ.)

Please Come Back (Before I Forget You)
Please Come Back (Before I Forget You) © Iskra Johnson
Industrial Muse No.1
Industrial Muse No.1, © Iskra Johnson
Silver Train Vista (Coast Starlight) limited edition print
Silver Train Vista (Coast Starlight) © Iskra Johnson
Facade (Smith Tower) print by Iskra
Facade (Smith Tower), © Iskra Johnson
Harbor Walk (Hudson Bay) print by Iskra
Harbor Walk, © Iskra Johnson
The Journey Through, abstract landscape
The Journey Through, ©Iskra Johnson
Island Portal (Vashon),print by Iskra
Island Portal (Vashon), © Iskra Johnson

* And…in case you forgot:

Tomorrow night 6-7:30, Under the Influence, opens at SAM Gallery — see you there with bells on!

Filed Under: Digital Collage, Prints Tagged With: art inspired by travel, creative digital printmaking, double exposure, travel photography, Traveler Suite Print Series

Iskra in Under the Influence, Opening December 5 at SAM Gallery

November 22, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Plum Wine Iskra SAM Show
“Plum Wine,” limited edition print on panel, 24 x 36 © Iskra Johnson
You are invited to the opening of

Under the Influence

at SAM Gallery
December 5, 6 – 7:30 PM
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101

Artists influenced by Asia are featured in SAM Gallery’s final show of the year. I am excited to be part of this group of artists including Deborah Bell, Alfred Harris, Laura Van Horne and Junko Yamamoto. Each of us is influenced by Asia in very different ways, involving surface, paper, collage, markmaking and photographic innovations. Join in this festive opening and celebrate the Asian influence on Northwest Contemporary art.

My work in this exhibit will show a new way of presenting my work on panel. The limited edition prints are meticulously mounted and sealed in layers of cold wax medium, which creates a subtle hand crafted sheen. Without traditional framing the work becomes an immediate experience of surface and color, unimpeded by reflections. The surfaces are hard to photograph, but here is a capture in the studio showing “As Above So Below,” one of the works that will be shown. If you would like to preview and reserve before the opening I will have these pieces in the studio through next Tuesday before they are delivered to the gallery. Give me a shout and I would be happy to show you in person. There will be an edition of 5 available for each piece, framed traditionally in plexiglass and brushed silver, or mounted in cold wax on panel. All sales through SAM Gallery.

Archival print mounted on panel by Iskra
Print mounted on panel with cold wax
“The Heron,” archival pigment print mounted on panel © Iskra Johnson

 I look forward to seeing you to celebrate the launch of the winter holidays!

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Prints Tagged With: Asian-inspired art, Cold wax on prints, Iskra at SAM Gallery, Iskra shows, Under the Influence

Invitation to Seattle Arts North Studio Tour, October 12 & 13, 10-5 PM

October 6, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Summer Storm Archival Print by Iskra
“Summer Storm,” Archival Pigment Print on German Etching © Iskra Johnson

 

Please join Laura Brodax and me at Modern Glaze, in our first time as part of Seattle’s

Arts North Studio Tour
October 12th and 13th, 10 AM – 5 PM
Studio 10 | Modern Glaze
14800 Westminster Way, Shoreline, WA 98133

Visit 10 North Seattle Studios in one weekend, and see a wide range of beautiful art, glass, jewelry and ceramics from some of Seattle’s best artists. Click these links to download the Studio Brochure or Map.

I will have a wide selection of prints, framed and unframed, as well as mixed media work on Venetian Plaster. Laura will be showing her highly collectable ceramic ware and photographic works. We are both photo based artists, but we have taken the medium in very different directions. I love the opportunity for our work to be shown together, and look forward to meeting new friends and old.

Brodax blue platter Arts North Studio Tour

Brodax Modern Glaze platters
Laura Brodax Ceramic Ware at Modern Glaze

 

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: Arts North Studio Tour, Iskra Fine Art Shows 2019, Modern Glaze Seattle, Seattle Art Studio Tours, Seattle Autumn Art Events

Arts North Studio Tour: Save the Date!

September 8, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Modern Glaze studio North Seattle Arts Tour

Please save the date for the Arts North Studio Tour in Seattle this October 12th and 13th!  Ceramic artist and photographer Laura Brodax has opened her new (and spectacular) studio space at the edge of the Broadview neighborhood, and will be hosting me as her guest artist for our first time on this tour.

Check out Modern Glaze on Instagram to see what the fuss is all about. I have admired Laura’s photography and ceramics for many years, and it is an honor to show with her. I will be displaying unframed prints of various sizes as well as some larger framed works and mixed media panels. Below are some of Laura’s ceramic works incorporating her photography, collage and serigraph.

Laura Brodax Ceramics
Laura Ceramics, courtesy of Modern Glaze

 

Iskra Studio Sale 2019
“As Above, So Below,” archival pigment print, ©Iskra Johnson

Be sure to visit the Arts North Studio Tour website and Facebook for a preview of work and a map of all 10 studios. Modern Glaze is located at 14800 Westminster Way N, Shoreline, WA 98133. Tour hours, 10-5 October 12th and 13th. I hope to see you there!

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Print Sale Tagged With: Arts North Studio Tour, Iskra Studio Tour, Modern Glaze open studio, North Seattle Artists

Northwest Mystic Summer

July 21, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Lummi Blues, archival pigment print by Iskra
Lummi Blues, archival pigment print by Iskra

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste.

It’s what everything else isn’t.

–Theodore  Roethke

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest summer, which arrived a few hours ago, sneaking in with a sun hat and a good book while the rest of the country fries in humid torment. A bit late, but divine. It’s hard to stay in the studio when the garden calls, begging me to count the lily pads and swoon in the golden light of the locust tree.

Yet, here I am, indoors, attempting to translate the outdoors after recent travels in landscape. The new work for SAM Gallery’s November show “Artists Influenced by Asia,” is directly influenced by the immediacy of nature here along the Salish Sea. A few weeks ago I went up to Samish Island with two dear friends, painters Chris Gedye and Patty Haller to see Patty’s new studio. It was complete bliss. We woke up in the morning to low tide’s iridescence, herons perched sentinel along the sand and wind stirring the branches of trees along the bluff. Off to the west was an island I’ve never seen from this perspective: Lummi, looking imposing and grand. Years ago I lived there from time to time but I never thought of it then as a mountain. My view was ground level, orchard, middens, the road to the cemetery. I stayed in a yellow farmhouse perched above the harbor and the chants from Indian canoes carried across the water and into the kitchen. Rose hips on the windowsills and light bouncing on the yellow walls so that even in the rains it seemed like summer. Day began with the ferry’s drone and the shriek of bald eagles hovering in the trees. I would sit on the steps with a cup of dark black oolong tea and wonder if happiness could be anymore pure. How astonishing it felt to gaze from the present into the past from another island.

Landscape is its own language, one I have never been taught, and I gain a great deal from watching my two friends paint. It is from them that I have learned the exquisite patience of leaves and twigs, the trial by fire that is trying to capture fog and air, and the mapping of space around foreground and background. Being out in the Skagit Valley with painters got me thinking of the Northwest Mystic School and the artists who gathered in the area, influenced by Asian aesthetics and the landscape, in the 1930’s through the ’70’s.  One of my early calligraphy teachers, Steve Herold, and several of my painting teachers were part of the community in Fishtown. I never got to this mythic artist haven, but the stories were legendary. Chop wood carry water was quite literal, and Steve would complain that after a week of chopping wood at the cabin he couldn’t hold a pen. Much of the world is losing its sense of place, but there are still true places here where you can see history, trace a lineage, and continue it, inspired by the same source.

Sometimes I work very quickly, and ideas pour out one after the other, with little time to think in between. The new work is different. It is slooooow. Thank you Mr. Roethke for understanding this, because it is what it is. Many people think that by it’s nature digital art and photography are quick (and easy.) But digital media can take just as long as painting. You think a piece is done, you walk away, look at it upside down, cry, and start all over……It’s perplexing to start with an instantaneous capture with a camera, and then to spend weeks revisiting the moment, layering and unlayering, looking for something either as real, (or more real) than life. These pieces are created from actual physical paintings blended with photography, rather than the found surfaces that I sometimes embed in my work. The paintings I do quickly, in samurai mode. The photographic merging is deliberative, gradual. As I take a scene apart and reconstruct it layer by layer I have been thinking a lot about my years of painting in sumi, and the delicate shadings of a line. And I will always wonder, what would Hokusai have done with an Ipad??

Blue heron, archival print by Iskra
Blue Heron, archival pigment print by Iskra
Anyone who walks around Greenlake knows the Heron. He is always in a thicket, and the branches seem to arrange themselves inconveniently, with the kind of random, merciless chaos that can take days to unravel. I may yet reorganize this, but for now, give or take a broken twig, this is where he lives.
If you are interested in seeing work in person give me a shout. I have showings of my work here in the studio several times a month by appointment. A selection of prints can also be seen now at Museo on Whidbey Island. Happy summer travels!

Filed Under: Digital Collage, Greenlake, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Watercolors Tagged With: Fishtown, Iskra Work in Progress, Lummi Island art, Northwest Mystic School, Roethke quote slowness, SAM Gallery, Samish island art, Skagit Valley art

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Iskra Fine Art Blog

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

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Instagram post 2196168705874965274_1682569995 Industrial Rorschach: If the on-site psychologist was to open his briefcase and show you this card and ask you what it meant you would say:

1) Textural Carpet made by Berber weavers sampling Cy Twombly and S&P histogram.  2) Pandora’s Box  3) The third movement of Brahms’ Concerto for Late Stage Capitalism.  4) A mostly neutrally colored Square containing Grief which remains obstinately blue and unprintable (out of gamut) as are most intense emotions
Instagram post 2194492950900180841_1682569995 A large travel piece, 24x36, for the discriminating trucking company that sees the beauty in grime. I can’t seem to get over trucks. I remember shouting out to them on road trips when I was 6. My mother had married a new man who was a gambler, and they would drive all night to Las Vegas. For me, day dreaming in the back seat, the trucks made it all worthwhile.
Instagram post 2193017376281226308_1682569995 The Travelers Suite of 8 new prints is in my shop today, first link in bio. Postcards from the edge, between stillness and motion. This one is called “The Journey Through.” 16x12” image on a 22x17 sheet of German Etching rag paper.
Instagram post 2191258353097851975_1682569995 Please Come Back Before I Forget You. (Coast Starlight Journey)
Instagram post 2190321261471738946_1682569995 Do you have a movie landscape in your mind where you live part of the time? I live in #mccabeandmrsmiller which is almost entirely without music and filmed in opium smoke and snow. Color is not necessary to tell some stories, the ones you can’t forget and relive before you wake in the morning. The House by the River, limited edition print, 16x20”. From the new #traveler series.
Instagram post 2189550942678971612_1682569995 I’m working on travel pieces today. The glimpse and the overlay, from a trove of photos taken on a recent trip on the #CoastStarlight. A double exposure is not just a trick. Not an “edit“. It is an acknowledgment that we are never in just one place in time. You can ask yourself questions like, is the composition balanced? Or you can ask the existential version: 1) When is a splatter a flight of birds? 2) When is a blur a memory? 3) When is a memory a lie? 4) When is a lie the truth? 12.5x16” on 17x22” limited edition print on German Etching.

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