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Iskra Fine Art Upcoming Shows and Publications

January 6, 2013 by Iskra 1 Comment

I am starting the year with numerous shows all within the next three months. I will post reminders of openings here as they come up, but for those who want advance notice, here is the list of what’s up between now and April. I hope you will be able to stop by and see the work in person!

Prographica Fine Works on Paper: “The Bleak View”: I will have five prints and a drawing in this show. A perfect theme for this time of year in the Northwest, when you either find the loveliness in 100 shades of gray or die trying. The show runs from February 2-March 9, opening TBA.

The Elegant Scaffold Construction Site Photograph — “The Elegant Scaffold,” Photograph, 16″ x 16″, © Iskra Johnson

Bainbridge Arts & Crafts, on Bainbridge Island: “New Media: Digital Art”: I will have four pieces covering a range of botanical and industrial themed-work in this invitational exhibit. The show runs from March 20- April 22, opening reception April 5.

The Reeds Transfer Print — “The Reeds,” 1/2 ev, 22″ x 30″ paper size, 16″ x 21″ image size

Painters Under Pressure at Phinney Gallery: A group show with my print salon. The show runs from April 3-May 1, opening reception April 12 from 7-9 PM. I expect to have a variety of sizes and themes for this exhibit, possibly including new experimental typographic prints from The Wailing Wall. This will be our first group show in many years, and I am very excited about it. If you would like to keep up with PUPs do check out our Facebook page.

EXIT/NoExit, experimental typography — “EXIT/No Exit,” experimental typography, © Iskra Johnson

Additionally, SAM Gallery will have four of my new large prints from Construction/Reconstruction on display in February as part of the rotating collection. It has been exhilarating to see how scale changes the work, particularly when the themes are architecture and space.

In the world of publications, I am very excited to be in two books this year. Tom Hoffmann’s Watercolor Painting will have its official launch party at Gage Academy Friday January 18, 6-8 PM. In conjunction with the book signing the Steele Gallery at Gage will be exhibiting Tom Hoffmann’s work along with that of contributors to the book in “Watercolor: Thoughtfulness to Spontaneity.” I will have a piece on display from my series of expressive botanical paintings.

This past summer I explored the wildly inprovisational world of cyanotype, and an image from that series will be published in Jill Enfield’s upcoming “Jill Enfield’s Guide to Photographic Alternative Processes: Popular Historical and Contemporary Techniques” from Focal Press. I will post a link to the book when it is published, in June. You can read about my experience with cyanotype here, in the post “Three Days in the Sun….”

Because so many shows are happening in a short period of time I will send this summary out to those who are on my email mailing list as a separate newsletter, but suggest you follow me here at my blog or on the Iskra Fine Art Facebook page for updates and reminders. I will limit the number of individual event invites as I know people are overwhelmed by email these days.

Happy New Year, keep the creativity flowing!

Poem for Waiting (Just Hours Before the Proposed End of the World on 12.21.12.)

December 20, 2012 by Iskra 3 Comments

Counting Time in Sticks (For My Ancestors)

People I never met but who must have known I was coming

have dreaded winter just as I do.

They too would ask release

and count perverse blessings

of lighter days as the air grows colder

the ground harder whiter harder

and fear itself envelopes,

being a real thing.

Before I was born they were

counting time in sticks

bundling the seconds

minutes

hours

days

weeks

months

though not knowing these divisions

only knowing without divisions

there are no endings and no beginnings

and sometimes you need both.

They had no mittens and no books or catalogs of mittens

and no down throws with lofted ticking

and no monogrammed leashes because the dog himself

had not been invented and the wolves could and gladly would

eat your children (count them).

Which great-grandfather lying in the tired dirt of late November

invented the four strokes and then the slash

while looking at his hand

perhaps missing a finger?

Did a woman break twigs into equal lengths and line them up equidistant

to measure the days since last she bled?

(Each tilting stick a small death,

a reprieve

a slanting wedge of light above her.)

In the Book of Hours

the man

sits at forest’s edge

and dries his boots above the fire.

The ghosted chapters on reverse

whisper August, harvest, maidens surely

and in the margins gold

laid by monks

drunk equally on purpose and absurdity

flickers like summer

in the heatless monastery.

How earnestly they lay the leaf and burnish,

my Irish cousins

their breath the perfect warmth

to resurrect

The Word.

Yet in the museum

of the darker pages

in the basement where the docents never go

there you’ll find the wooden plank

where scratched the days

with a gilding knife,

in sets of five chased always by a ragged few,

the prisoners.

___________________________________________________________

Above, charcoal and pencil, “The History of Counting”

Conversation With Myself (while I waited for you to make up your mind….)

December 12, 2012 by Iskra Leave a Comment

This is the first in a new series about urban language. Composition assembled from the broken sentences around me: re-purposing. RE-listening, taking back the marks on the random public/private canvas. Rewinding that David Byrne movie “Stop Making Sense.” I think I’ll call it The Wailing Wall. People just can’t stop talking.

New Mixed Media Digital Collage: The Big Dig

December 8, 2012 by Iskra Leave a Comment

This piece came from the last glorious day of sun in late October, a long wind-blowing walk along the perimeter of Seattle’s “Big Dig” project. This is the view from the waterfront with one of our stadiums in the background.

See more of these kinds of images in the print gallery Construction Reconstruction.

Tom Hoffmann’s New Book on Watercolor Painting

November 29, 2012 by Iskra Leave a Comment

I was thrilled today to receive my copy of Tom Hoffmann’s new book on watercolor, “Watercolor Painting: A Comprehensive Approach to Mastering the Medium,” just out from Watson Guptill. You may know Hoffmann as a painter of incandescent skies and inimitable backstreets, an artist who takes “the unpaintable” and transforms it– he can make the most ordinary extraordinary. Over the course of his career his work has moved through many phases, but always it holds an indelible signature. His paintings are about paint and how it wants to be, combined with wonderful leaps of reduction and abstraction. His best work captures the air and the time of “place”, with a haunting sense of both immediacy and reverie.

This new book provides a valuable and fresh approach to understanding the medium. It’s a big picture view that will fill in what is missing from the volumes that teach you how to render kitten fur or use frisket to paint birch trees in the snow. (Not that these techniques aren’t valuable for any painter’s repertoire……) I am happy to be included in the book with a study for “From One Tree.”

From One Tree Botanical Watercolor Study — “From One Tree” watercolor of laurel leaves on hotpress Fabriano © Iskra Johnson

Hoffmann’s is the latest in a series of truly fine books written by instructors at Seattle’s Gage Academy of Art. Collectively they are setting a new standard for instructional books, many of which are becoming best sellers in their area of expertise. A list of other books by Gage instructors is included at the end of this post. Stay tuned for a book launch party and show at Gage in January. And if you would like to see more of Tom Hoffmann’s work you may visit him at his website.

A selection of books from Gage Academy instructors:

“Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice,” by Mitch Albala

“Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice,” by Juliette Aristides

“Contemporary Drawing, Key Concepts and Techniques,” by Margaret Davidson

“Lessons in Classical Drawing: Essential Techniques from Inside the Atelier,” by Juliette Aristides

“The Artist’s Complete Guide to Facial Expression,” by Gary Faigin

Follow the book and see more work by the contributors at the Hoffmann Watercolor Facebook page.

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