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Ode to Beauty: New Contemporary Botanicals

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Hydrangea contemporary botanical art on plaster by Iskra
Logic Study, with Hydrangea, mixed media on Venetian plaster, © Iskra Johnson,

Early spring has brought torrents of rain, warm Chinook winds and precipitous bloomings to the garden. Tulips, plums blossoms, the wild yellow flame of the forsythia, a riot of colors and scents that inspire bursts of energy and shifting moods.

I have two very different shows coming up this spring with radically different themes. There is a method to the madness, as I go back and forth between the grime and grit of urban construction sites, the urban streets, and the refuge of nature. Both series are about the interplay of structure and surface, and the narrative of impermanence. With both subjects I use my camera to capture moments on the edges of transition. [Read more…]

Meditation on the Winter Solstice, 2015

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Winter Solstice, 2015

“I shut my eyes in order to see.”— Gauguin

 

The-Pale-House
The Pale House, printing ink on paper, © Iskra Johnson

There are structures designed to withstand earthquakes and there are structures built to slowly decay. These are scaffolds of membranes that melt under rain and light until the wind can blow through, rocking them lightly back and forth. The seed, meant to escape, might remain for years, seemingly weightless, but weight enough to keep the structure anchored. Time moves around it.

I lived for awhile, many years ago, in a former Catholic monastery. The light that came in through stained glass and wooden shutters filled the rooms with rare colors and a sense that every moment within had been granted or won. In this domain  I couldn’t make a cup of tea without a sense of ceremony. In the morning I would choose a cup, pour boiling water through a silver weir and thick black leaves, and settle with my Earl Grey on the back stairs behind the kitchen. There I could sit and watch the world awaken through the steam of bergamot. [Read more…]

Almanac Entry, December 9th

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the stunned bird, mixed media on plaster by Iskra

Memory, December 9, 2015

A summer day, July. The air giddy with heat and mote-filled like the river in California. Everything buzzing and humming and hungry.

The birds in their circumference of delight swooped from locust to maple and up to the roof. The clouds, shimmering cellophane white like molten sand showed themselves twice: here, and also there, exactly. Easy to fly into the unreal cloud and be met with blackness, sudden and complete.

The bird lay for a long time, whether sleeping or stunned could not be determined. After due consideration of the forms of interference the gardener let sun and wind and ravens take their path. A few days later she opened the window and the bird was gone.

       – The Gardener’s Almanac of Irreproducible Phenomena, Chapter 3

 

Artwork: “The Stunned Bird,” © Iskra Johnson, mixed media collage

Iskra with Painters Under Pressure at Seattle Sampling December 4-6

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When my print arts salon, Painters Under Pressure, suggested we do the Seattle Sampling December studio tour it was. . . . July. No sweat, plenty of time! Now we are all in that wonderful pre-show manic state of trying to make art round the clock while life in its inconvenient way interferes. Laundry? Bookkeeping? The Gym? Huh. I have never made so much work in such a compressed period of time. I think the happiest state, the state of mind I treasure most, may be just pure focus, and I’m there, even if I am wearing last week’s socks. [Read more…]

Object Lessons: The Moon, the Feather, the Leaf, the Rose

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The moon is here in all its singularity, full and bright, and daring me to look at it all night and not go blind. November is not yet here but in the wings, and threatening. The mood shifts, worry and fear attendant.

When I think of the year and its divisions, the prismed light across the page, time’s markers are uneven, an anarchic rout.  The losses collide into the dark months, and if a few spill into March the chill of winter accompanies. There is good reason to sit in the dark and stare at the moon, realizing more clearly, “Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.”

This, I think, is why I walk in Autumn and forage until my pockets fill with stones and twigs, why I take huge comfort in contemplation of a single thing. To look at it until it returns my gaze. Until there is no forward or back, or there is both at the same time, a cancellation that returns me to my self. I carry home my gleanings and arrange and rearrange until there is an order, each thing remembered in its place in time.

 

Found feather, mixed media on plaster by Iskra [Read more…]