Iskra Fine Art

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

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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

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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…]

Iskra at Building C Open Studios Holiday Sale, December 4th

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A Suspended Structure, ©Iskra Fine Art

I am excited to be part of the Building C Open Studios this year, courtesy of AJ Power, who is hosting me as a guest artist in his studio on the second floor. I adore AJ’s work, and have had one of his magic bird images hanging on my wall for years. Building C is located at Leary Ave NW & 14th Ave NW in Ballard, “the big brown warehouse across from the Ballard Office Max.” Ample parking in the adjacent lot or on-street, enter on 14th Avenue. Building C is a hive of talent in many media, including painting, ceramics, jewelry and clothing from 24 artists. Open Saturday, December 4 from 12-7, masks required.

I will be showing work from the last two years of explorations in collage, photography and mixed media, as well as some brand new pieces. Most of the work has never been publicly shown outside of my blog or Instagram. I’m curious to get your eyes on it and see what you think! 

I have had requests recently for small works for gifts and small spaces, and so this year I am trying something different, with a new selection of framed pieces ranging in size from 6 x 6″ to 12″ as well as limited editions of prints on 13 x 19 and 8.5 x 11. For those who missed previous open studios where I offered my Venetian plaster botanicals, the remaining pieces will be here as well. Unlike a thematic show this is a chance to see every non sequiter and direction my artwork has explored, from the amber moods of the Sweet Old World to the blazing color and disrupted space of my architectural and maritime work. Below is a tiny sampling. 

The Nest print by Iskra
The Nest, ©Iskra Fine Art

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Disrupted Architecture: Studio Process and New Prints

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In the studio I have been returning to typographic practice in a new abstract way. These recent pieces are a mix of ink drawing, photography and collage composed with my process of digital alchemy. Buildings are big, the body is . . . human sized. These pieces consider scale, in terms of both architecture and maker. Largeness interrupted by the slightness of a memory, a figure, the intimate handprint of dirt and atmosphere and time. They continue the Construction/Reconstruction series based on construction sites and ruins and the blurred space in between.

In a break from my usual process I am beginning with pure drawing, using for my “brush” tools made of wood and steel that have hard edges designed for the work of construction. Working either from a photograph or memory I explore architectural space as I would a letterform: drawing the structure and drawing the air around it. Along the way I have found myself in the pure territory of composition, revisiting the lessons of Mondrian and the austerities of the Bauhaus.

The first set of images here show early studies that go back and forth between drawing and digital blending. The completed pieces that follow are all editioned as archival pigment prints. As with my other new media work they are not reproductions of paintings, but contemporary printmaking in which the print itself is the final art. 

New Typographics Process ink drawings

New Typographics Process ink drawings

As I scanned and deconstructed the original drawings I entered what I think of as a Mid-Century Modern Moment. Mondrian hovered at my shoulder and advised. It was a rigorous process of sacrifice and minimalisation that shaped his path from “drawing a tree” to knowing the space between branches. Although I always thought his older work was emotionally bloodless, the sense of mystery in his reductive methods stayed with me. Pieces like “Broadway Boogie Woogie” are as much a part of my DNA as formica and ashtray mosaics – and they come with a great soundtrack. By working with ink and soft absorbent papers incapable of truly hard edges I have invited the human element to re-surface. The piece below is as much about the sensual experience of paper as it is about the mind.

A Conversation with Mondrian, mid century style abstract
A Conversation with Mondrian, © Iskra Fine Art, archival pigment print, size variable

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Save the Date! Holiday Sale at Studio C December 4th 2021, Plus New Collage Works

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The Mariner’s Dream, ©Iskra Johnson

“The Mariner’s Dream,” is a new addition to the ongoing project of The Floating World. If you are lost at sea, (or maybe watching The Titanic in your starry night print pajamas at 2 AM) you might wonder just how large the moon should be as it rises, and where exactly in the sky it will appear. Is it true that nothing should ever be in the middle of the sky? And what if a cloud enters the lower right corner: does that make it ok? If you are also lost in a world where things are (still not) normal, and wondering if the hands on the clock will ever return to count the minutes, this image may speak to you. I found the moon about 23 years ago in a flea market in Lisbon. I carried it and a dozen other timeless planets to the border of Spain and back, and then home where they landed in one of the tableaus of mystery objects I keep around the house, waiting for their moment to tell me something new. This Sunday time’s planet floated into the sky and resurrected an image from another era that apparently I was not quite finished with.

It is true, I have actually been watching the Titanic, in my celestial themed pajamas. I have been avoiding the part where it all goes down – Leonardo and Kate never looked so good, and I want them to stay that way forever. Meanwhile, the world insists otherwise. In the supply chain catastrophe of our New Normal 50 cargo containers are right now afloat off the shore of Vancouver island, and the ship itself is on fire. I pray that the mariners are safe, and that nobody’s home remodeling project, (bathtubs? refrigerators?) or landscape painting book that they spent years writing are in those containers. Who knew that “supply chain” would be everything? It’s all got me thinking about time and distance and faith. The bigness and the smallness. And interdependence.

I never got to blogging about the opening at SAM for Rising Tides. Thank you so much for every one who came to the opening and for the support of our work. Above, Tallmadge Doyle, me, and Jueun Shin without our masks for a split second. I am grateful to team Pamela and Lindsey at the gallery and the other artists for making this first SAM Gallery show of the season a success. I was especially happy that Barge (Salmon Bay) an image from a previous body of work, found a home, with a collector who described my work as “elegant, industrial, and psychedelic.” Faith and time: I had exactly one psychedelic experience, on a hilltop in Virginia when I was 16, and I’m still running with it. Artists are often told that “currency is everything” – yet my experience has been the exact opposite. Art and life are a long game, and this month work that is anywhere from 15 years to a month old has made its way to someone’s walls. Faith. Ideas appear for a reason which may never explain itself, but we have to trust and build on what the tides bring in. What we judge as detritus can become gold, or at least a shiny fishing lure, over times’ passage.

Barge (Salmon Bay) on canvas
Barge (Salmon Bay) on canvas

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