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The Pandemic Pause Drawings, A Benefit Sale for Fair Fight

June 3, 2020 by Iskra 2 Comments

Origami crane pencil drawing by Iskra
Origami Peace, ©Iskra Johnson, graphite pencil drawing on paper, $350 (SOLD)
Pandemic Pause | New Directions

Since the pandemic lockdown began two months ago I have been working on a series of drawings. The original impetus came from my ongoing project, #100DaysOfTheSpaceBetween, introduced last month. Although the project also involves photography and other media, I decided to use drawing as the foundational practice. In this strange time, cut off from family, friends or social contact, I have sometimes floundered. The isolation of confinement has thrown me into emotional states surreal in their intensity, and the quiet absorption and focus of drawing has become a calm oasis in my days.

As the solitudes of the pandemic have segued with shocking speed into the pandemonium of a June aflame with flash grenades and tear gas I have questioned, as many artists have, the relevance of their art in this time. Social media demands a simple story, an allegiance to one side, and the embrace of slogans with no nuance. I reel in horror at the videos of George Floyd’s murder and wonder if I should drape a black tarp over my Instagram account? For how long? Do I stand with the rioters? The protesters? The police? Or is it possible to stand in a place where I can see from all points of view? Who gets to decide?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Drawing, The 100 Day Projects Tagged With: #100DaysOfTheSpaceBetween, art and politics, Fair Fight, iskra drawings, Isolation diaries, Pandemic art, Silverpoint drawing, Stacey Abrams

Iskra Fine Art #100DayProject and the Garden Show at Museo

March 30, 2020 by Iskra Leave a Comment

The Space Between Train Collage

(See the Motion version on Instagram.)

It has been only 20 days since I last wrote here, and yet in that time the world is completely changed. Millions of people across the globe are now confined to their homes as modern life as we have known it shuts down in the face of the corona virus. The profound sense of isolation in the studio, combined with the media’s constant drumbeat of dystopia pushed me for several weeks close to despair. Forced to look at the books on my shelves (and consider reading them) I came across Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In it, the draft of a calligraphic treatment of a quote: A single metaphor can give birth to love.

With galleries closed and shows delayed or cancelled, and with a sense of life or death urgency and helplessness heavy in the air, motivation for working in the studio has been in question. But the quote, and its tissue paper flourishes, lingered in my mind. I think it was its echo that led me to realize that this is the time, after years of thinking about it, to take on #The100DayProject. Under house arrest in my pajamas, there is no escape. And certainly nothing to lose.

The One Hundred Day Project was first introduced in 2007 by designer Michael Bierut as a challenge to his graduate students at Yale. The outlines were simple: “Do a design operation that you are capable of repeating every day. Do it every day for one hundred days.” The project was brought onto social media by Elle Luna in 2014 and has become a platform for reinvention with global reach through Instagram.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Botanical Art, Collage, Drawing, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Iskra Sketchbooks & Journals, The 100 Day Projects Tagged With: #Artinisolation, #covidcollaboration, #social distancing, #the100DayProject, Iskra shows, Museo Gallery 2020, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Instagram for Artists (or, Social Media for Introverts, You Know Who You Are…)

July 30, 2018 by Iskra 10 Comments

Instagram for Artists Blog Post by Iskra
Everything looks different in a grid….Painting © Iskra Johnson

As an artist and a designer I have been involved in blogging and social media for many years. I coach creative individuals and businesses in how to use social media, and Instagram is the platform I recommend most. I have found that many artists, particularly older ones, remain on the sidelines unsure if the distraction will be worth the effort and time. Although 60% of Instagram users are between 18-24, the percentages drop to 18% for 50-64 year olds, and only 8% of those over 65 use the app. Given that many artists reach maturity and do their best work at well over 50, this is a startling waste of one of the best marketing platforms available to artists today.

There is a common perception that Instagram is a shallow and narcissistic platform devoted to selfies, lifestyle, and Beyonce’s latest platinum baby bump. (True!) But dig deeper and type a few key hashtags into Instagram search: #abstractart (10.3 million posts) or #artgallery (9.3 million) or #painting (56.5 million). There are serious followers of art online: 79% of art buyers under 35 years old use Instagram to search for new artists. According to the Hiscox report 4 in 10 art buyers bought online in the last 12 months, in a market valued at an estimated 4.22 billion. If you are aware that the older generation of art collectors is, um – dying? – these statistics might get your attention.

The two basic strategies of social media for creatives

When I first started looking at Instagram I had my own doubts. I was dazzled by the caliber of art illuminated on my phone, and overwhelmed by the quantity. Was it true that Instagram could “make” your career? What if nobody followed you? Did you have to be young, beautiful, rich or pierced in strange places? Could you be a quiet introvert? I watched from afar for a long time, trying to understand what made this platform work.

In studying a wide spectrum of artists and creatives it became clear to me that Instagram, like other social media, follows two main strategies, paths that I call Audience and Witness.

The path of Audience is driven by entertainment value and puts the viewer in the driver’s seat: it aims to please. If you are following the strategies of Audience you respond to what the audience likes by doing more of it, and giving them what they want. “You,” in a sense, follow “them.” The path of Witness is related but different. Yes, there are viewers, but they are secondary to you, the maker. The viewers are there to fall in love with your journey, to learn from and to be present to you. They are your peers and your community. They truly are following you and not the other way around.

In social media both paths are important. Witness and Audience intersect in many places, and each has elements of the other. But it is important to know the difference between them and to know what you are doing when you are doing it. This article is an in-depth look at the important principles behind social media marketing for artists, with a roadmap for how to use them, specifically on Instagram. First, a look at a popular buzzword.

What does it mean for an artist to have an Instagram “brand?”

It’s a doctrine of social media marketing that you need to be on Instagram to build and promote your “brand.”  An online industry has spring up to teach you how to harvest attention, get followers and (theoretically) Sell Your Work and Become Famous. “Branding” is a word that has evolved in popular usage far from its origins in Madison Avenue. It is often equated with “logo” or “identity” in terms of a unique identifying trademark. But its original meaning as used in 1960’s advertising is more complex. David Ogilvy’s famous definition is “The intangible sum of a product’s attributes.” In other words, what you say, how you say it, and what people associate with you. More than a recognizable symbol or name, it is how you are perceived. How does this translate into the highly visual platform of Instagram? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Social Media for Artists Tagged With: instagram for artists, instagram for introverts, Iskra teaching, Seattle Artist League, Social Media for Artists

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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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