Prints Archives - Iskra Fine Art

Celebrate the Beauty of Swans: Holiday Print Sale, Twenty Percent off!

December 2, 2024 by Iskra Leave a Comment

A big thank you to the friends and collectors who came out to my open studio and party November 16th! You made the year a great one, and work continues to go out the door, as those who could not make the open house stop by to visit. There were many requests for the swans to appear as cards, and as promised, they are now live, in The Swans Suite in my shop. All of the works are available as larger prints as well. A few of the swans are available only as larger prints. I may make a second Swans stationary collection as time goes on.

As a holiday thank you I am offering a 20% discount in my shop from now through the Solstice. If you have had your eye on a larger piece this is your chance to save big on any purchase over $150, cards excluded. Enter SOLSTICE24 at check out.

A note on upcoming price increases: Due to the inflation of costs for ink, paper and postage, I will be raising prices to catch up next year. This is one of your last chances to purchase cards at the current rate of 6 for $33

[Read more…]

New Photographic Art from England

October 16, 2024 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Blue Swan on the River Wensum Swan in garland of branches — *Blue Swan (The River Wensum) ©Iskra Johnson*

I have been home from England just over a month, and I am still in a state of wonder and dislocation. Thirty perfect days abroad, and now – insert quandary emoticon– normal life. This post will share a few first highlights of the trip and a glimpse of new work, more of which can be seen in this portfolio under Photography.

I had many reasons for making the journey to England, after 30 years away. Any one of the reasons is a novella, which is why I am thinking of creating a new blog devoted to travel. Where to even begin? Perhaps with the question posed last week by friends who had just returned from Scandinavia and Prague: why England? To which I replied: The Wind in the Willows. That classic children’s book about Mole, Ratty, Badger and Toad and their bucolic life along the river shaped my idea from the age of 6 of what countryside should look like. I was a child of the wide open west, where barbed wire and naked fenceposts divided the fields, you could drown in the murky depths of a horse trough, and a volcanic mountain filled the eastern door of the barn. Our river was a quarter mile down a steep cliff littered with rusted barrels and stalked by coyotes and mountain lions.

My father gave me the Wind in the Willows when I entered 1st grade. I would sit in bed in the farmhouse and run my fingers over the illustrated endpapers, tracing a green quilt of soft hedgerows, a river you could easily row a boat down, a tiny bridge, a weir, and Pan’s Island, where, in Chapter 7, Rat, Mole, (and every susceptible child) could be awed by The Mystery. Page 133 still holds a four leaf clover and the browned paper on which I wrote out Rat’s failed attempt to describe, in words, the wordless presence of god. So yeah, I went to England to find that. It may explain why I could not stop following the swans. (Click on any print image to see details in shop.)

White Swan on the Avon River fine art print — *White Swan on the Avon ©Iskra Johnson*

[Read more…]

Iskra Summer Shows 2024

July 24, 2024 by Iskra Leave a Comment

*Looking At You, mixed process print, variable sizes, © Iskra Johnson*

I’ve just dropped new work off at SAM Gallery for the upcoming show, “Splash!” opening August 10, from 2-4 PM. Work from my Immersions series will be included with water-inspired works from SAM Gallery artists Cara Jaye, Joe Max Emminger, Andy Eccleshall and Kate Protage.

While I am in England a show based on Seattle landscape featuring four of my industrial and maritime works will open at Chatwin Arts. Keep your eye on their Instagram for the opening!

Downtown was beautiful this morning. Trucks roared, dumpsters clanged, fish flew and tourists flocked the waterfront. Shifting double exposures refracted from windows in the sky. Pigeons! There is a palpable excitement this week as Seattle Art Fair opens and greets the art spirit.

When I got home there was a note from Seattle Office of Arts and Culture about Hope Corps. I’m sharing it here, in hopes you will respond or pass it along. This is a promising sign of new opportunities for artists in the city:

The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture (ARTS) invites individual artists, cultural producers, arts administrators, creative workers, community groups, and arts and cultural organizations to apply to Hope Corps.

You can apply by proposing projects that generate career opportunities for the local creative workforce, and contribute to the well-being of Seattle’s downtown community with community-driven projects, events, performances, and more.

Envisioned as an economic recovery program for Seattle’s creative workforce, Hope Corps connects under- and unemployed artists, creative workers, and culture keepers with career opportunities that benefit the public. The 2025 Hope Corps program is part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, and funding will go towards projects that employ creative workers through activations in Seattle’s downtown neighborhoods:

Belltown, Central Downtown, Chinatown-International District, Denny Triangle, Pioneer Square, Stadium District.

Proposed projects should be unique events or activations, taking place in 2025 in street-level, accessible, outdoor or otherwise publicly visible spaces that provide engaging experiences for the public and bring audiences downtown.

Grants range from $5,000 – $50,000 to support creative worker wages and project expenses.

If you do nothing else in the next few days, do go swimming! And if you aren’t at the lake, see you at the Art Fair…

The Sailboat New Media by Iskra

Seattle’s Iconic Landmarks: New Fine Art Print and Stationery Series

June 5, 2024 by Iskra Leave a Comment

*The Atlas of Memory, Iconic Landmarks of Seattle*

For the past few months I have been working on a series of prints and stationery brought to you by a new (somewhat fictional) entity called The Atlas of Memory. The Atlas is a repository for images of Seattle’s landmark buildings, parks, and iconic wonders that hold an enduring sense of place. You could say the Atlas is where I live and where I would like more people to dwell with me: in appreciation for the history of Seattle as a frontier town with all of its ungainly aspirations for the culture and grandeur of Europe and “The East” (ie. Chicago and New York.)

What remains of Seattle’s historic legacy is vanishingly small, and all the more important to preserve. My hope is that this series of works, which will eventually number a dozen or more, will encourage enthusiasts of rapid change and the transformation of Seattle into AnywhereUSA to pause, sit down on a bench or a boulder and just look. See what’s here. Study the history of this little outpost at the edge of the world. Think about how change might be accommodated in a way that does not just erase, but that brings history forward, maintaining the best of design and artisanship that created treasures like The Fox Theater (Music Hall), demolished in spite of years of preservationist efforts, in 1992.

My subjects will range from official landmarks like the the Volunteer Park Conservatory to the oversized kitsch of 1950’s signage to the left-over furniture of the World’s Fair. I take the Space Needle personally. It’s where my 6th grade class went, at graduation, for its first formal dinner. I wore green tennis shoes and a purple Nehru ensemble with pleated skirt. Some kid named Bob picked up chicken with sauce on it with his hands and ate it like a drumstick at a picnic. Hashtags had not yet been invented, but it was #etiquettefail. As I mentioned above, Seattle began as a frontier town . . .

The Smith Tower Limited Edition Print

*Smith Tower in Vintage Light ©Iskra Johnson*

[Read more…]

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…]

Celebrate the Beauty of Swans: Holiday Print Sale, Twenty Percent off!

New Photographic Art from England

Iskra Summer Shows 2024

Seattle’s Iconic Landmarks: New Fine Art Print and Stationery Series

The Smith Tower Limited Edition Print

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

Let’s Connect

Join Iskra’s Mailing List