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The Hellebore Suite: New Botanical Prints and Cards from Iskra

March 20, 2022 by Iskra Leave a Comment

New, from the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena, The Hellebore Suite, available as prints and blank greeting cards.

The hellebore is a complicated flower. Appearing in late winter, it rises up from drifts of snow and bracken, with leaves that unfold like carved marble. The blossoms hang from delicate arched stems, often hidden in shadow. When the hellebore looks up at you, you see a face both innocent and knowing, and you understand why this flower has been a key player in the world of potion and myth. This is a flower you should admire — but never eat. I have many varieties of these in my garden scattered among the ferns and hostas. They also grow wild in the woods nearby, where I captured the pale lavender specimen above, in a print called The Meadow.

I did the first portrait of a hellebore as part of a series called “Sweet Old World” that came about as I sorted family papers and photos going back to the 1800’s. The style of this work is inspired by vintage tintype. I love the ragged borders and soft organic focus of photography in the early days of its invention. These pieces are a modern interpretation of tintype’s vintage haze and inexactitude, using watercolor, photography and digital printmaking. Click on any image to be taken to my shop.

Hellebore in Victorian Style botanical greeting card — *Hellebore in Victorian Style ©Iskra Fine Art 2022*

Spring Hellebore cards by Iskra 1200 — Spring Hellebore Cards

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Botanical Stationary and Prints from The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena

March 1, 2022 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Wheelbarrow in garden photo by Iskra — Winter Muse

Since the last entry from my garden The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena has published a series of botanical stationary and prints. The response has been wonderful, and I am grateful for the support of friends and new patrons from around the country. I am beginning to hear from people who share how they have used the cards, sending them as thank-you’s, condolence, letters and in sets as gifts. There are now ten in the series, with more to come each month. Here are a few glimpses of what’s in the shop.

Anemone in the Field Botanical Card by Iskra — Anemone in the Field

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The Gardener Takes a Walk Under the Full Moon | A Valentine

February 14, 2022 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Moon and cloud courtship

They tell you the moon is cold, if you read the studies.

It’s just some kind of silt made of shredded stars and forgotten planets burnished and abraded by cosmic winds without any feeling at all. It is purely accident, a slip of a cartoonist’s pen, that causes us to see things that don’t exist.

Man, Goddess, pick one, or pick both. It may pull the tides, it may make women crazy and men confused, but it is, in fact,

scientifically proven to be genderless:

the moon is an It.

Tell that to the Redwood and the Elm, Cedar, Spruce, their ink-black armature against the hyacinth sky designed to curtain the clouds and moon in courtship.

Moon in Trees

Knowing that last month’s Janus-faced equivocations had slipped into history and that now was unequivocally coming; seeing the tulip break from its monotonous green gloves and say (this very day,) Red, the Gardener knew the situation was urgent. [Read more…]

Eat Dessert First….What Would Eve Say? The Winter Show at Museo

January 10, 2022 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Elves in a sugar coma

When Museo Gallery announced “Eat Dessert First” as the theme for January’s show I was not enthused. You may be one of the millions of the happily deaccessioned who, exiled from the office, went home to become the master sourdough bakers you’ve always wanted to be. I however haven’t cooked dinner since March 2020. Since then I have been living on Purell cocktails and roasted cashews. How would I be able to tell which comes “first” when I still have not been able to distinguish the days of the week much less my “meal times”—? For two years it’s been a desert of silent meals spent doom-scrolling with a napkin, a votive candle and my phone, and waiting for the world to stop turning in the wrong direction. Appetite. Hmmm.

Nonetheless, I spent a lifetime as a designer taking assignments I didn’t want to do. My training is to catch whatever stick is tossed out and carry it back to whoever threw it. And so I thought about my resistance to this title and worried it, word by word, into the snow-frozen ground. For my personal holiday hashtag I took #sugarcoma, and looked for every situation in which it might apply. Against all odds, which included an alert from the state that I had been exposed to Covid and an emergency test on the morning of Christmas Eve, I had, astonishingly, a picture-perfect and rhapsodic Christmas surrounded by family, throughout which I ate spritz cookies and chocolate for breakfast. For three days I walked in a happy trance from the Betty Crocker cookbook to the cookie tins with their waxed paper petticoats peeking out. When you are an adult home for Christmas after two years of absence nobody says you can’t eat dessert first, or for that matter all day. There is no more perfect state than sitting in a rocker with a blanket and a book after three salted caramels watching snow fall just on the other side of the Christmas tree.

Mulling over the pleasures of indulgence, the ever-lurking punishments of guilt, and the lucrative self-help industries that promise to lead us not into damnation but into boundless self-love, the riddle of the title became clear. It’s the parable of all time. Eden, Eve, and the Apple: The First Dessert. [Read more…]

New Years’ Eve: In Which the Gardener Takes a Moment to Reflect

December 31, 2021 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Winter garden New years Eve

(Excerpt, from The Gardner’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena December 31, 2021)

The first thing the Gardener noticed on the morning of December 31 was the color of the snow. The sun had emerged after days of gray and bitter cold, and as shadows stole across the land they brought with them a new color, “warmth,” transforming the drifts and vaguely monstrous shapes of the shrubs into benign presence. The light most particularly touched the robins, who demand warmth to ignite their color fully. On the dogwood branches the robins sat, eastward facing, their chests swelling and feathers plumping as though they had been feasting all week instead of pecking amidst tire tracks for the carcasses of worms. In another garden a varied thrush had fallen to its frozen death with a sound like lead and been buried with ceremony, its dark necklace enveloped in garnet strings and rubies as befits a prince.

Last year the gargoyle had reigned over the pond with his broken wing. For 40 years his gnarled features gave purchase to every bird who came to sit and drink from the spout pouring water. Each December, through the incantations of ancient fractals, the water carved a heart from the ice, a wet obsidian streaked by the occasional golden contrails of fish. Each year the birds descended in order of size: first the crows, then the flickers, then the robins, sparrows, chickadees and towhees, and lastly, the shy wren. The Gardener did nothing on these days but observe and laugh, and all was good.

The Gargoyle of Christmas Past

Long ago….. [Read more…]