Iskra Fine Art

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A Meditation on August as Drought Comes to the Pacific Northwest

August 20, 2015 by Iskra Leave a Comment

I have recently begun writing on Medium. Today I have published a piece about the garden, and what it is like to be a caretaker of Eden when global warming turns everything upside down. Here is an excerpt, with new artwork done in homage to the magnolia.  I hope you will visit Medium to read the entire essay and share with friends, gardeners, and anyone looking for ways to think about living in this time of drastic change.  

magnolia mixed media on plaster by Iskra Fine Art
Magnolia, mixed media on plaster © Iskra Johnson

 

 

What is resilience? This is the question I ask myself hourly in the summer the West is on fire.

It is August. Poppies and cosmos intermingle, their ungainly stalks eye-high and lassooed with string. The distance shimmers in incense. The air is thick, and sound travels and bends slowly around corners. Even airplanes seem different, with the lazy small propeller sounds of a slower century. August defies the laws of breathing. You can exhale and stay there, moving neither forward nor back. Look at the dogs, and the lawn, indistinguishably golden and bleached, panting, lolling, wordless. Be like them. Walk barefoot into the garden at dawn in a long white dress and feel the stubble against your toes. There will be only one cool moment before evening and it is now.

I stand for hours with the garden hose, saving what trees I can before rationing begins. The ground dampens quickly but after months of heat I am no longer fooled. I can sink my fingers into the dirt and know it will be bone dry. When dirt changes character and no longer knows how to receive, the scientists call it hydrophobic. The garden hose and watering can, these symbols of all things fecund and generous and regenerative, have met their match. [Read more…]

Filed Under: The Garden Tagged With: gardening, Global Warming, inspirationdrought, lessons from the garden, magnolia, Pacific Northwest, resilience

How to Purchase Artwork from Iskra Fine Art

August 11, 2015 by Iskra Leave a Comment

I currently sell my work through the SAM (Seattle Art Museum) Gallery, in person through my studio, and through my new Etsy shop. I am very excited about the launch of the shop and I hope you will take a look. You may also purchase work directly from my website through the Shop link in the menu. If you use the menu link you will remain in the Iskra Fine Art interface and will enter Etsy only at checkout. To keep up with my latest work and what’s happening in the studio subscribe to my blog and newsletter.

A selection of my work at SAM Gallery can be seen here. The gallery has a wonderful new space in the museum in the heart of downtown Seattle. One of the unique and very smart things the gallery offers is the option to rent art as well as purchase. Many companies and individuals start by renting art at a very affordable monthly rate and then decide to purchase, with the rental costs going towards the purchase.

My mid-sized print prices range from $300 to $1,800 –$2,500 for larger prints, and the cost is the same whether you purchase from the gallery or through me. On Etsy I am offering a wide range of work at smaller sizes to allow people to purchase a many different levels. To learn more about my prints and about digital printmaking go to the print section of my website. If you choose to buy from me directly I can ship unframed prints to you if you are out of the area, or I welcome you to contact me for a studio visit, where you can see a large body of work and examples of framed art.

I am happy to collaborate on special site-specific projects. Although most of my prints are intended for specific papers and are sold in editions limited in set and quantity some of them may be printed on alternate surfaces such as metallic papers and face-mount acrylic, or mounted on panel.

I also work in many other media besides printmaking, and I sell my drawings and paintings directly or through SAM Gallery. The prices of these pieces vary greatly depending on medium and size, so if you have interest in a particular piece please feel free to contact me for more information.

 

Art in interiors. A print of my beloved Japanese Pear Apple.

Living with art. A print of the beloved Japanese Pear Apple in my garden, in autumn.

 

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: buy art, purchase art from Iskra, SAM Gallery

Seattle Art Fair and Satellite Events, July – August 2015

July 24, 2015 by Iskra Leave a Comment

“The Seattle Art Fair will showcase the vibrant culture and diversity of the Pacific Northwest by building on the region’s existing momentum to create a truly unique, innovative art event that will further establish Seattle as an influential player in the global art landscape.” — Seattle Art Fair

Emeral City Skyline, photocollage by Iskra
Photocollage © Iskra Johnson

Seattle artists and collectors are buzzing, in their quiet Northwest way, about the opening of the Seattle Art Fair next week. There is so much happening!! Yes, it deserves two exclamation points. To get the big picture, preview the official fair at Artsy. Visit the fair’s events page to see the line up of lectures, site-specific work, and partâys, chief among them the gala fund raiser opening benefiting Artist Trust. Many of Seattle’s finest will be participating, as well as an impressive roster of the best galleries from Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Asia and Great Britain. Thank you Vulcan for bringing the world to our city.

The Seattle artist community has rallied with an astonishing line-up of satellite art exhibits and events running concurrently over the course of a week. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: arts events Seattle, Out of Sight, Satellite Seattle, Seattle Art Fair, Seattle arts, Seattle summr

In Defense of the Back Yard: Urban Density and Urban Eden

May 13, 2015 by Iskra 5 Comments

Watering_can_spring

If I start this little essay with a Latin name will you stop reading? If I say “cornus controversa” for instance? I could say “dogwood” of course, but since this piece is not about dogs and only indirectly about “wood” why not go bold, if obscure? Common names can be so misleading, rather like those movie reviews which prevent you from weeping at the heroine’s tragic fate because in the back of your mind you keep hearing the movie was just a “tear-jerker.” I sometimes catch myself wondering if my favorite tree is really as beautiful as I think, or if it is in fact just a frantic panting mess, a dog slobbering on my knees and ripping up the Irish Moss. But then I go back to rolling its proper title under my tongue.

As in, “the other morning I had my back turned to the cornus controversa when I heard a sound of wings.” [Read more…]

Filed Under: Architecture & Sense of Place, The Garden Tagged With: ADU Seattle, backyard cottages, birdlistening, Birdwatching, city garden, cornus controversa, dogwood, gardeners, goldfinch, literacy, nasturtium, open space, Seattle Gardens, sustainability, urban density, urban preservation, urban wildlife refuge

“Makers’ Marks”: Iskra in Painters Under Pressure at the Virginia Inn

April 29, 2015 by Iskra 1 Comment

I am very excited to be in a show with my printmaking salon opening this May 7th. As one of the salons originally started by Seattle Print Arts we have been meeting for well over a decade to critique and inspire each others’ work. We include in our ranks a psychologist, architect, calligrapher, graphic designer, massage therapist and scientist, and the depth of professional experience in this wide range of disciplines informs the discussion. We also have backgrounds in diverse forms of art making. Our name, Painters Under Pressure, alludes to the explosive possibilities when paint is put under duress and standard methods are subjected to unexpected intervention. In this show at the Virginia Inn you will see mixed media, monoprint, potato print, linocut, painting, and digitally composed work.

Here is one of my pieces in the show, hot from the image laboratory. I composed this while thinking of the idea of the “glimpse” and how in a very short moment both Arcadia and Industry may fade into the rearview mirror of our cyber-kinetic present.

The_Green_Bridge_Archival_Print_Iskra
The Green Bridge, Archival Pigment Print, 24 x 18, 1/3 © Iskra Johnson

To see the event posting and share with your friends through Facebook please visit Makers’ Marks:Painters Under Pressure at Virginia Inn. The Virginia Inn, at 1937 First Avenue, is a wonderful bar and restaurant on the edge of the Pike Place Market, a great place to start or end the First Thursday Artwalk. We hope to see you there from 5 to 8PM –– come test out our signature drink, custom mixed for the show. Name this cocktail, please, we can’t decide! Press & Brayer, Pressure Valve, Bourbon Roller Flats, Amber Muse, Painters’ Proof ––?

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Prints, Road Trips Tagged With: Iskra shows, Painters Under Pressure, potato print, printmaking, PUPS, Seattle art shows, Seattle Print Arts, Virginia Inn

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Iskra Fine Art Blog

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Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: I added baking soda to my gesso. Pretty wild texture here, not sure yet how stable it is. You can see the test of the edges in the second piece— the rugged edge only works if I get a pristine background and unfortunately the tape I used to mask it did not work consistently. Hello tape, my old friend and nemesis. You work differently on every surface. These little barn structures give me great comfort as the bigger structures of our government and nation seem to be crumbling.
Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the fields somewhere, on the road to Edison. Acrylic on prepared ground, sketchbook.
MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai We MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei at Seattle Art Museum.
I am thinking this morning about the phrase Americ I am thinking this morning about the phrase American Heartland. Learning to paint a barn means studying the neutrals. Our political discourse has pitted the barn people against the city people and there are no neutrals, just shouting. But if you walk out into the horizon lands, all you hear is the wind and a kestrel. Walk in boots, hard-pressed against your toes, walk on stubble barefoot and get acupuncture for a lifetime. Study the intervals: how the clouds can be in the upper one third neatly or one sixth, precarious, the future disappearing with the sun as it falls making the barn your whole world if you’re three years old and looking up; one big triangle with a square in the center, and so many mysteries inside the square. 

There is also the question of what kind of light seeps between the verticals and is the light coming in the evening or at midday when you can finally begin to make out all the other tiny squares within the big square, which would be called hay. Reach for the rope and swing out over the canyon, that great big canyon from bale to bale.

Collage studies: painting neutrals
A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yor A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yorker this morning, about the global population crash. This will upend urbanism, for sure, though it will very good for veterinarians and dog groomers:
“Only two communities appear to be maintaining very high fertility: ultra-Orthodox Jews and some Anabaptist sects. The economist Robin Hanson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that twenty-third-century America will be dominated by three hundred million Amish people. The likeliest version of the Great Replacement will see a countryside dotted everywhere with handsome barns.”
First Thursday. Such a beautiful night. First Thursday. Such a beautiful night.

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