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Armchair Travel: Notes on Britain and Rory Pilgrim’s RAFTS

December 19, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

The Slough Monoprint by Iskra
The Slough, Unique Transfer Print

“I think one of the most precious things we can do is also think about dreaming or the imagination as a support structure. It is something that is rudimental to our existence.” Rory Pilgrim

When I was 10 my brothers and I built a raft. I have no memory of how we started, although I suspect it was from laziness:  a derelict half-boat set adrift by some other sailor on the lake and found by us among the pontoons. We captured it just in time to lash the rotting planks back together and haul new wood from land to make it last another summer. I can see us wading waist deep, hammering, knotting rope, balancing on one foot and falling into the lake, and somewhere in the vivid picture of the waves and the light glinting is a thick red book bobbing against the wood like a tiny tugboat. Books do not float, so I do not know how this could be. But there was a book, it was red, and it was discussed. There was some acknowledged mystery, and I am sure if I asked either of my brothers what book it was and what author they would say they remembered nothing but the pages: how limp they were with the weight of water but how the book refused to sink.

Tonight, contemplating travel across an ocean, I sat down to confront paralysis about my itinerary in England. Every week I stare at maps; I draw [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art Reviews, Transfer Prints Tagged With: Contemporary British Art, Rafts, Rory Pilgrim, SAM Gallery Winter Event, The Turner Prize

Spring Shows & Notes on Travel

April 21, 2019 by Iskra 1 Comment

Travel Quote Airports by Iskra
Lost in dreams at the airport…..

Lots going on this spring! This post will share updates about spring shows, new work, and some notes on my recent trip to New York. Many pictures, so you may want to view in your browser if you receive posts via email.

The annual Garden Show at Whidbey Island’s Museo is lovely, and runs through April 28th. Open 11-5 Wednesday through Monday and Tuesdays by appointment. Sundays open 12-5. Shown here, Magnolia Eva, a mixed media print in a limited edition of 5.

 

Museo Garden show Iskra
Museo Garden show in Langley on Whidbey Island

Opening Saturday May 4th is The Arty Party, in the Barrel Room Gallery at Domanico Cellars. 5-9. 825 NW 63rd St. Ballard 98105. I will be one of 18 artists showing a collection of work meant to move you and move from the wall to your home: all work will be under $500 (!). The Barrel Room is a wonderful alternative gallery space on the ungentrified edge of Ballard. In the gallery Nancy Stentz and David Harto create an ambiance of elegance and fun. Visit the art, have a glass of wine, go out in the courtyard and talk motor parts or gardens with the eclectic mix of patrons. This should be a great party, just in case you were in need of one.

 

The Arty Party at the Barrel Room Gallery

On to New York:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Architecture & Sense of Place, Art Reviews, Digital Collage, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Photocollage Tagged With: art blogger, Iskra Shows spring 2019, museo gallery, New York Armory 2019, Rebecca Solnit quotes, Sarah Entwistle, Seattle Art Source, Signs and Symbols Gallery, The Art on Paper Show 2019, The Arty Party

Artists I Love: Wendy Orville Upcoming at Davidson Galleries!

March 16, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Refelected Poplar by WendyOrville
“Reflected Poplar,” ©Wendy Orville

If you appreciate fine landscape and monoprint I strongly urge you to put Wendy Orville’s upcoming solo show at Davidson Galleries on your calendar (and get on the preview list!). I first saw Orville’s work on a tiny postcard 15 or 20 years ago. I kept the card on my refrigerator for a decade, and became an instant follower, when there were very few opportunities to see her work. Now, fortunately, she has found the perfect home in Seattle’s Davidson Galleries, and next month you can see nearly 40 pieces of her newest landscapes in one place.

To call this work “landscape” is a misnomer. More apt would be “astonishing events of ink and erasure.” These incandescent monoprints have a sense of atmosphere that takes my breath away. From a distance the flawless gradations of value look photographic. As one comes near the surface dissolves into exquisitely subtle marks and layers of ink that exist purely as abstraction. This is mastery. I adore Orville’s work both as a printmaker (who knows just how difficult this kind of work is to do!) and as a collector. The cloud-scape that lives in my house lights up the room, a reminder of what presence looks like.

Fallen Tree by Wendy Orville
“Fallen Tree” ©Wendy Orville

 

Sitka Monoprint by Wendy Orville
“Sitka” ©Wendy Orville

I should caution you that if you are interested in this work it will likely go very fast. I had fallen in love with numerous prints from Orville’s last show and did not have the luxury of choice, as they were snapped up by collectors well before the opening. Perhaps I will see you at the preview!

An occasional feature from Iskra Fine Art: Artists I Love. Encouraging you to love art, support artists, and build the collector community.

Filed Under: Art Reviews, Living With Art Tagged With: artistsI love, Davidson Galleries, monoprints, spring art openings Seattle, Wendy Orville

Jim Dine at Wright Gallery | The Last Days of Dexter Avenue (As We Knew It)

August 1, 2014 by Iskra 2 Comments

It’s a day when the news provokes long discussions of despair and bewilderment on my social media feeds. I find myself in a desperate ricochet between fear of plague, spreading wildfire and epic drought, and I can’t stop thinking of the numbers in Gaza, numbers attached to bodies, bodies attached to the fact of children and hospitals and schools and what can only look to me like slaughter of a trapped people. I hold up a dollar bill and consider what part of it to tear off to protest my taxes going to mortars and grenades.

As I sit in miles of hot stalled traffic I feel increasingly bludgeoned by things beyond my control. This traffic jam is brought to the Emerald City by the Blue Angels. Each summer the freeway closes to honor the Navy’s elite flight squad and the quaint ritual of military preening that carves the sky with white ribbons and shatters eardrums of those below. All I feel as I watch the jets dive between skyscrapers and lilt upward from my rear view mirror is dread. Gaza seems right here, right here in my lap.

I am on my way to see the Jim Dine exhibit at Wright Gallery. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Architecture & Sense of Place, Art Reviews, Photography Tagged With: Dexter Street, documenting Seattle, gentrification of Westlake, Jim Dine, last days of a neighborhood, urban street photography, Wright Gallery

Rachel Maxi’s ‘Little Made Big’ at Sugarpill: Painted Wonders and Apothecary Dreams

November 16, 2013 by Iskra 1 Comment

I could say that the reason I like Rachel Maxi’s work is that she paints objects that I love too. But the truth is that whatever Maxi paints becomes one of my favorite things, even if I wasn’t planning on it. Plastic toy horses? Or for that matter, horses of any kind? Ever since The Red Pony broke my heart at age 11 I have been immune. Yet here I am, smitten.

Breyer Paint Horse ©Rachel Maxi
Breyer Paint Horse, 16″ x 18″, Oil on Panel, 2013 ©Rachel Maxi

Or, to take another hard sell, the dahlia? The word has always offended me: like “dhaling.” Overblown, old-lady-ish, the kind of flower you can only love when you are part of the Dahlia Society and enjoy tying plants up on sticks and telling people not to pick them. Except now not only am I in love with a dhalia, I want it in that very ordinary jar, because it’s just plain beautiful.  The word is covet:

Dhalia_Rachel Maxi
Dhalia, 46″ x 52″, Oil on Canvas, 2013 © Rachel Maxi

Check out Maxi’s work at Sugarpill on Capitol Hill, and do it fast, because this show is only up until November 19th. While you are there revel in the sensory magic of this one-of-a-kind shop: apothecary, culinary, mercantile…….mystery. Cures for whatever ails you and pleasures to keep you well.

(900 E. Pine St. Seattle, WA 98122 • T 206.322.7455 • MON + TUES 11AM – 5PM / WED + THU 11AM-7PM / FRI + SAT 11AM-6PM / SUN 11AM-4PM)

Filed Under: Art Reviews, Object Lessons: Essays and images inspired by "A History of the World in 100 Objects." Tagged With: little made big, northwest oil painter, Rachel Maxi, Sugarpill, toy horse

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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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