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You are here: Home / Archives for Travel

Notes from the Road: An Artist’s Trip to the Palouse

August 28, 2012 by Iskra 4 Comments

Sage_On_Map_EasternWashingtonWeeks after returning from Eastern Washington, I can’t seem to put the map away. From the corner of my eye I see the blue of the rivers and the lakes and the pale butter of desert and wheat. The whole map seems cast in the blue of the sky. It keeps me on the road even as I stand in my kitchen looking at weather the color of concrete. I read the names of the towns and put them together, knowing I would believe these people were real if I read them in a story: Clayton Ford, Lamona St. John, Gilmer Packwood, Randle Bingen, or just plain Quincy, with no last name. I want to have a cousin named Mayfield, and I want to marry a man named Dusty, which lines up along the road to Othello right next to Hay. To look at the map, to be in the map, they infuse each other – the blue sky the same color as these meandering backroads. The names of these places are equal parts dirt and aspiration. Yes to the beat up range horse and the saddle whose rosette tooling has worn flat from years of use, and yes to the Spokane carousel whose horses bloom with gilded chinoiserie.

Palouse-Road

Here in The West, in the upper left-hand corner formerly known as The Oregon Territories, (and before that as the land of the Nez Pierce, the Quinault and the Yakima Nations), we are divided by mountains. The usual associations of the compass don’t hold; The “East” is not know for its Buddhists and pagans and barefoot Occupiers but for small towns with even smaller churches with firmly held conservative beliefs. The West curls its lip at the East and mocks its Bible-quoting politicians and lack of tender regard for restoring the gray wolf. The East would prefer not to sponsor seawalls and fancy underground freeways and weddings in which both the bride and the groom are named Meg. And yet for all its smug urban insularity, people of the West regard the East with nostalgia and they carry a certain ache for its rural beauty. Out there is the land. No matter how thick the condominiums or how constipating the traffic or how high the price of a double latte vente with vanilla on the west side, the land is out there just over the pass saying: we have space and sky here for you. It’s saved for you and in the bank: beauty.

Every few years I make the pilgrimage across the Cascade mountains, to see if that space is still there or if I imagined it. This August I went with two artist friends to stay on a farm outside the farming town of Pomeroy and look after a herd of goats. It was delicious to be with companions who live to stop and to look. We packed a week of lunch, and checked our brakes for the long steep slope down the other side of the mountains.

HAYBALES-FOR-SALE
A clear sans serif always gets the message across.
Turn_Right_Road_Signage
Directional Signage. This is not Canada.

After a bit, beyond the too-big fruit stand that is now the only fruit stand, in the town of Thorp whose name seems too short and where the massive marquee offers “Antiques | Fruit” which just makes us think of raisins; after that bleak stretch where we think we’re not anywhere at all, we do reach The Road. Here finally is the ribbon of hills. The folding and unfolding waves of gold and green pivoting into creekbeads and scree and broken down things. Shimmering asphalt, blazing hairpins, the river, the barges, the Falls. White butterflies in pine trees. And a sudden leap into science fiction. When did the land become a wind factory? I turned my back and the Germans came and put these white giants, these three-armed industrial starfish on every horizon. What would Ray Bradbury think? Would he lie down beneath them in their protective mote of gravel and toast them with a glass of dandelion wine?

Two_Barns_PalouseThe_Road_PalouseThe_Old-Fashioned_WindmillThe_SciFi_Windmills_of_The_Palouse

Each windmill earns a farmer $10 thousand dollars a year. Each windmill powers 350 houses. Put that up against an idea,– a relic of an idea — of “landscape” or “natural beauty.” You’ll lose. And so we go farther east, to where the migration hasn’t taken hold, practicality and beauty are in harmony, and the highest best use of land is wheat and peas and these are just coincidentally lovely. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Photography, Road Trips, Travel Tagged With: Artist journal of the Palouse, Artist Roadtrip, Blue Mountain Artisans Guild, Eastern Washington Landscape trip, Jennifer Carrasco, Mary Flerchinger, notes from the road, Palouse journal, Paula Gill, Pomeroy Washington, road signs, road trip journal, Steptoe Butte, the East-West Divide, visit to a goat farm, visit to Steptoe Butte, writing about the west

Winter Journey to the Yucatan

February 26, 2011 by Iskra 2 Comments

Sometimes you go to an unexpected place. Here are some recent images from a visit to QuintanaRoo and the lovely village of Akumal on Mexico’s Caribbean coast.

The-Bright-WIndow

Relic-Shadow

Aloe_AkumalAll Photos © Iskra Johnson

Filed Under: Photography, The Spiritual in Art, Travel Tagged With: aloe, Artist journey to the Yucatan, church of Valladolid, Iskra photography, Photo journal of the Yucatan, Photos of the Yucatan, textures of Mexico

Artist Retreat in Mexico

January 28, 2010 by Iskra Leave a Comment

This December I really wanted to get away and feel warm, get some sun on my face and my soul and make art in a different environment. I found the ideal retreat at Casa de los Artistas about half an hour south of Puerto Vallarta in Boca de Tomatlan  I signed on for the quiet week between Christmas and New Years, and found myself with the rare luxury of the whole Casa studio to myself, under the benign tutelage of Bob Masla, proprietor, teacher and painter extraordinaire.

Bob and his family have built a wonderful three story retreat in the middle of the fishing village of Boca. A river runs directly below and outside the gate. As the river is the main highway, with two other streets on either side, you have the experience of being part of the village on a 24 hour basis, starting with the roosters and church bells and ending with the moon and the surf.

My room had its own balcony overlooking the river under the protective canopy of a huge Amapa tree.  I could sit here and watch the sun rise over the hills and follow the fishing boats’ passage to the sea and feel perfectly content… although I did in fact wander upstairs to the 1,000 square foot studio overlooking the river and paint every day for a week. I worked in watercolor and Bob painted in oils, but the difference in our two media had no bearing on the quality of his advice. Whatever he had to say about my various projects proved unfailingly useful and insightful from a technical standpoint, and he is a natural teacher in that more intangible way of simply knowing how to make you feel encouraged.

The food was exceptional, whether it was the home-cooked gourmet Mexican cuisine by Ruby at the Casa or “dining out” at the lovely and informal palapa across the river (just take your flipflops).  There I would have fish or shrimp caught that day, finished off by home grown Ricia, a brew smokier and smoother than tequila and made by the proprietor of the palapa from his own agave. I remain convinced that Ricia is somehow…medicinal, even though it is reportedly sold at Mexican hardware stores.

I would love to return and encourage anyone thinking of taking an artist/spirit retreat to Mexico to consider Casa de los Artistas. Bob and his family are gracious and welcoming, and the house is exquisite.  Retreats are held on a regular basis on a range of topics,  from painting to Mexican cooking to psychotherapy and spirituality, and guest teachers are welcomed. Here is a page from my journal begun while I was there:

Watercolors-Of-Mexican-Tiles

Filed Under: Iskra Sketchbooks & Journals, Travel Tagged With: artist retreat, Artist retreat in Mexico, Bob Masla, Casa Artistos, Christmas retreat in Mexico

Journal Jamming from LAX: Where is the Village?

January 18, 2010 by Iskra 4 Comments

Mexico-Travel-Journal-With-The-DogMExico-Trave-lJournal-With-Boat

© Iskra Johnson 2010

I am coming from a place where the main street is a river, where every person who passes every other person says Hola, where dinner is caught at dawn and served at night by torchlight, where on Sunday morning they wake you with cannons and the scolding of churchbells until you leap from your bed to say YES! I am coming! I am truly here! Ranchero music announces the weekly arrival of gasoline and when a steer gets loose he is roped to a palm tree, a bridge and a delivery truck, in that order. Every time I see him on the cobblestone path this dog gives me The Look: Unabashed need? Resignation? Desperation? Love? and I offer it back.

I am coming from a place where you go each night to the ocean to celebrate the sunset to a place where you do not see the sun except on television advertising Mexico, neon blue seahorses swimming on plasma screens above the cheese-dripping BurgerKing. I am entering a particularly grim system of transport designed to squeeze you through as quickly as possible to the next destination, accompanied by the barking percussion of bins and belts, jewelry and shoes and the irritated squall of security alarms. Only now do I learn about the man who almost blew himself and everybody else up with his underwear. We shuffle.

I am entering the First World, the Fast World, the world where everyone is talking to someone who is not here, and listening to music only they can hear, although I can feel the bass humming through the man next to me and ask him “could you turn your ipod down?” — so I can remember the ranchero music in my head. I have a shell in my pocket and sand biting my heels. Memory feels already very fragile.

Next to me a man comments to no one in particular, “This place is ugly. The light is bad. It feels lonely.” I want to embrace him, because he is saying aloud what I am feeling, he is saying, Where is the Village? I scribble a resolution on my boarding pass, “look for the village wherever you are. Don’t wait for catastrophe.”

Three days later, Haiti. Now the world has another chance to shrink to human size.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: artist journal, artist travel journal, coming home blues, coming into LAX, First World Fast World, Where is the Village

Journal Entry: Home

January 17, 2010 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Teach_Disappearing_Also_Me

Call-It-Memory

Mexico-Journal-Home

© Iskra Johnson

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: artist journal, artist travel journal, the journey has just begun

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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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