Iskra Fine Art

Seattle’s Waterfront Park Construction Project

by Leave a Comment

Waterfront Park with Wheel
I loved the Viaduct, a fact that is documented by acres of elegies, eulogies and shrines made in its honor. As one of its passionate defenders, I mourned when it came down for the as-yet unproven benefits of a “park” and an “underground tunnel.” The viaduct’s mood range was immense. Beneath its clumsy mastodon pillars one could wallow in the dank smells and charcoal smears of pure grime. Above, given a tenth of a gallon of gas and any class of car, a million dollar view rolled out from sea to shining sea and a white-capped mountain. It was our last glimpse of The View, as contrasted with our current life with an ever-diminishing View Corridor. We now see the world beyond the city in slivers, something blue or gray and moving slowly as atmosphere does, sliced against a block-long bank of windows that only reflect the sky and will never be it.

All that said, what a difference in perspective 10 years and a pandemic: Never again will I write eulogies to graffiti in the same way. Now that random scrawls are inescapable and cover every inch of our city with relentless self-regard I just want the power of a large hose filled with bleach and the god-powers of erasure. This shift in perspective hit me with bracing clarity as I stumbled into the Waterfront Park Construction project on a gray Sunday morning. With no hall monitors present, no generators, no growling excavators or men in hard hats shouting at me to leave or show my permit I had freedom to walk during Sunday matins like a slow monk observing, shooting, revising, studying every angle of scaffold and ramp and the lyric possibilities of fresh concrete. [Read more…]

From One Tree: Botanical Watercolor Paintings as Fine art Greeting Cards

by Leave a Comment

Laurel leaves watercolor

“From One Tree”, A new offering from The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena

Before the Gardener moved onto land with a house she spent many years in a brick tower in the city. There her rooms were lit by the changing colors of the Sycamores outside the windows. Summers were dark, with a heavy cast of green oxide. Autumn showered the walls with gold, and in winter the air became blue.

The apartment building shared one side with an alley and here, on her daily walks, the Gardener began to notice unusual leaves scattered in the mud. The leaves were mottled with curious patterns and glowed with ruby, burgundy and lime. They seemed to have fallen from an ordinary laurel hedge, but all the other laurels in the neighborhood were monotonously dull and one color of green. She picked up one leaf and then another, and soon she was a collector, arriving each day to her rooms with pockets filled with fragile specimens. [Read more…]

The Wabi Sabi Suite of New Botanical Cards and Upcoming Shows

by Leave a Comment

Summerlight Botanical Card

 

Everything is in flux in late February, not quite winter, not yet spring. The juncos still sit on top of the echinacea forgetting December’s snows and pecking vainly for seeds. The willows hang above the water’s edge remembering autumn, and the wild plum cannot wait for the warm winds that bring spring’s color and perfumes. A new set of cards from the Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena is out today and available in my shop. I am calling this set of images The Wabi Sabi Suite, in recognition of the sense of impermanence that colors February’s mood.

The images were originally made as transfer prints using my original paintings or photographs printed onto rag paper with a solvent. The process is unpredictable and brings a granular texture and soft irregular edges to the images. “Wild Plum” is particularly soft and dreamy, as its original source was a 40 yearold film photograph with the distinctive soft focus only film can create. If you are interested in the large size of Summerlight, it is framed in maple and available from my studio. A very limited edition of 3, of which one is left, the image is 16 x 21 on a sheet of 30 x 22 Arches 88.

 

Summerlight in FrameSummerlight, available from my studio

[Read more…]

New Calligraphic Abstractions from Iskra Fine Art

by Leave a Comment

Industrial Noise Abstract
Industrial Noise, Abstract Calligraphic © Iskra Johnson

For me there is no more valuable way to start the morning in the studio than by reading poet Jane Hirshfield, and her book Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. I think it possible that I will still be reading this book, quarter-page by quarter-page, for decades; her words are so resonant and visual they transform my world each time I read them. This morning’s find was a passage on subtlety:

 “ Subtlety’s etymological roots lie in the loom-woven cloth. It is the name we give to thought that is both finely textured and ranging, able to bring disparate and multiple qualities into the unified, usable fabric of a new whole. The uncertain is subtlety’s inscape: what is woven has – and needs – gaps. In subtle response, thought is stitched into place with its own undertows, opposites, and extensions, by a mind that questions and crosshatches its statements and feelings. Language itself is subtle by nature, multi-stranded of meaning – and what is good poetry if not language awake to its own powers?” 

Abstract Landscape Collage by Iskra
(Detail) Abstract Landscape, paper collage © Iskra Johnson

Although my work ranges over many themes, the overarching theme may be the means of expression itself: language. Even when the framework is not visible, my background [Read more…]

Elusionary Landscapes: New Drawings and Collages from the Rural Heartlands

by Leave a Comment

Symmetries Interrupted a barn collage landscape
Symmetries Interrupted, limited edition archival print from original photography and painting ©Iskra Johnson Available here

An entire season has passed since I last posted here. It has been a long sun-filled summer filled with concentrated studio time and a pivotal week spent in Eastern Washington in the long awaited Tieton Residency. A dear friend moved to Tieton in Eastern Washington two years ago, with the intention of creating a residency in her farmhouse for visiting artists and writers. The pandemic intervened and the residency did not happen for two years – until this August! I had the farmhouse, the upstairs studio, and the landscape to myself during the day, with hours to wander, photograph and draw. It was an unforgettable time of slow communion with my pencil and camera, with evenings spent in good company getting to know the Yakima Valley in new ways with my hosts. 

Drawing in situ, a skill I had forgotten, and a way of being that feels like home.
Yakima Valley Cuisine Scene
Yakima Valley Cuisine Scene, local, fresh, innovative. Top row, two very different approaches to the idea of soup; below, the wildly wonderful counter at Crafted, with chef-owner Dan Kokomo keeping his charm and his cool on a busy Saturday night.

The White Barn, landscape photography by Iskra

The farmhouse is situated on a road with a front row seat to sunrises and sunsets over the orchard valley. The muse of the property is The White Barn, which I have taken roughly a hundred photographs of (and which is available as part of an ongoing portfolio of Western Photography.) The architecture on the immediate property was my primary focus during the residency, with road trips to document alternate forms of my favorite structure, The Shed, in its native habitat. During this time I used drawing to sharpen my concentration, and apps like SnapSeed to experiment with new ways of combining digital and drawn imagery, which became final works in the studio once I got home.

[Read more…]