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You are here: Home / Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past / Industrial Strength Update: Show Hours and More

Industrial Strength Update: Show Hours and More

September 17, 2017 by Iskra 1 Comment

Iskra Industrial art at SAM Gallery
“Blanchard Street” and “Salmon Bay,” limited edition mixed media prints on canvas, 40×40″ (electrical outlet shown for scale.)

Hi Friends,

Thank you to everyone who came out to the opening at SAM Gallery last Thursday! It was a great time, and I so appreciate the support from the community, patrons and friends. It was really wonderful to meet some of my collectors and to hear the stories behind their connection to my work. (And some of the conversations may have inspired a Social Practice project: stay tuned for #engineerslookingatart. . . . who knew it would be the biologic engineer who found brassieres in my abstraction of scaffolds?)

Many people have asked me how long the show will be up, and since SAM Gallery has a different model than most galleries I thought I should send out a quick note to let you know the best window for seeing the work in its original installation. One of the things that makes SAM such a great place to show is that they place art through both sales and rental. For a very affordable cost companies and individuals can rent artwork or rent to own. This means that often after a week much of a show is reconfigured, as work flies out the door. Already one of my favorite pieces is off to its new home and a new one is in its place. So if you would like to see the installation in something close to its original arrangement (and Jody, the esteemed curator of the gallery did an beautiful job), I urge you to try to stop by before this Thursday. I will have work up for the rest of the month, but it will likely be reconfigured, and I love how it looks right now (17 pieces!). Gallery hours are:

MONDAY CLOSED
TUESDAY CLOSED
WEDNESDAY 10 AM – 5 PM
THURSDAY 10 AM – 9 PM
FRIDAY 10 AM – 5 PM
SATURDAY ​10 AM – 5 PM​​​​
SUNDAY ​10 AM – 5 PM​​​​

The phone number for the gallery is 206.343.1101 and the entrance is through the gift shop on the lower level at 1300 First Ave Seattle, WA 98101. Work that is available can be seen on my artist page.

Here are a couple of other shots of the installation I took this week, and I will post links to a few more on social media of opening night.

SAM Gallery Industrial Strength
Work by Iskra Johnson on the left and Kellie Talbot on the right
Industrial Strength SAM Gallery
Industrial Strength with Saturday sitters. The man on the right is mesmerized by a painting by Kate Protage, hidden behind the wall.
Eventide 2 print by Iskra Johnson
“Eventide,” 30×30″, went home with a new collector. This is a limited edition of 10, and 9 remain
Counterweight, limited edition print byIskra
“Counterweight,” 15 x 15,” part of a series about the Chittendon Locks. I loved hearing the story from the couple who purchased this about their experience going under this bridge on a boat. My work is about sense of place, and it makes my day when people can find their own memories in what I see. Nine prints remain in this edition.

It’s been a very exciting year of art making. I have so many ideas it is overwhelming. Fortunately I have been offered a solo show in the spring at a wonderful gallery in Mt. Vernon, where I can expand into new directions and see these ideas emerge. Tentatively titled “Industrial Pastorale,” the new series will look at the Northwest landscape and the borderlands between city and country. Follow me on Instagram and on Facebook to see my work in progress and follow my scouting missions into the northern landscape.

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: art openings, Industrial Strength, Kate Protage, Kellie Talbot, SAM Gallery, Seattle art exhibits

Comments

  1. Suzanne says

    September 18, 2017 at 3:56 pm

    I am so happy for you. Will be there Wednesday.

    Reply

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At 18, in my first year in class at Cornish, Charl At 18, in my first year in class at Cornish, Charles Stokes said: “To be an artist, first you must learn to visualize. Your assignment is to go home, close your eyes, and visualize an apple. Rotate it and observe how it looks from every direction, as though you were God and you had just designed this fruit. Then imagine cutting it into pieces and turn each piece in your mind’s eye. If you need to get in the bathtub, do.” A year later, my skin had turned permanently pink from baths, but I was beginning to be able to See. That moment when I really could imagine the apple from above, below, the side, and visualize the slices falling away was a revelation. The cherubim cheered. Today I can shut my eyes in any moment of boredom and see the apple rotate like a muffin on a dim sum tray, round and round, the highlights glinting.

Apples also nearly killed me. When I was 19, I worked for a month in the orchards of Orondo, and slept under the trees in a sleeping bag and little else. Each morning I woke to the drone of crop dusters and the pale white incandescence of pesticides sifting through the leaves. My water came from a galvanized pipe fed directly by the irrigation ditch. Me and Caesar Chavez? Solidaridad. I came back from the orchard with a stomach malady that defeated every doctor I saw. Over the ten years following I lost 32 pounds, and I had been slender to start. At 27 I came within three weeks of death. Over that decade I was tested for everything, and my body claimed an allergy to every food except the pinto bean. No amount of antibiotics or enzymes or the primitive curatives of those days worked. After this inexplicable and punishing siege on my health it took years to get back to food as a good idea. I lived on boiled carrots and rice. The one possible argument to inexplicable: every alternative medicine healer found indications of arsenic, a prime ingredient of pesticides and known disruptor of the digestive tract. (Continued in next comment, complete essay at link in bio.)
Exquisite work by @christinegedye @fountainheadgal Exquisite work by @christinegedye @fountainheadgallery.
Experiments in juxtaposition. Yesterday I worked Experiments in juxtaposition. 

Yesterday I worked in the studio to some kind of divine mix of Raga and drone and hand pan drum and returned to the state of mind I’m here for. 

This study of an eggshell is only incidentally an eggshell; it is any fragile thing regarded with love. I think of the days when there was an antique shop on every block and I would haunt them and find among the watering cans and spoons and rusted winches a lace handkerchief starched and embroidered with imagined daisies by some woman crossing the country in a covered wagon with a packet of seeds. I held the cloth up and watched clerestory light fall from the rafters and transform its quiet folds into something burning, heard the sounding bells of ships in the harbor, the train rumbling in the tunnel, people stumbling and laughing on the boardwalk. 

Light is the keeper of history. As we walked out of the steel plant last week, steam mingled with clouds and enveloped the massive structures around us in softness. Just before my camera died, I took this picture of a steel door. On its face, the flag of an imagined country, stripped of warp and weft and left with only traces. As the world hangs on the edge, held by the flimsiest of props, each day aims another missile at certainty. We still have memory, and that may save us.

#TheFragilityProject
Slow Art. The beat helps tune out the Everything E Slow Art. The beat helps tune out the Everything Else Going On. . .#graphitepencil
I am excited to be part of the annual open studio I am excited to be part of the annual open studio tour for 
Spotlight North 2026, Noon to 5 May 16+17! 
Meet the artists of Shoreline, North Seattle, 
and Lake Forest Park in their native habitat: 

Robin Arnitz, Anna Wetzel Artz, Laura Brodax, Shruti Ghatak, Eva Isaksen, Amanda Knowles, Sarah Norsworthy, Paul Leavitt, Paul Lewing, Iskra Johnson, Dale Lindman, and Shoko Zama.

I will be showing new drawings and paintings influenced by nature and place, as well as ongoing print work, and several new card series. Many people have told me they would love to collect more but their walls are full, or they are moving into smaller spaces. In response, I have created new tiny works you can set on your desk or slip into the spice rack between the oregano and the thyme. I have always loved the intimacy of small work: It is the quietest most personal of conversations. These three pieces are from the hundreds of media studies I do to see “what happens if,” in an experimental state of mind. They are made with a combination of liquid graphite, pencil and paint, and presented like tiny one-of-a kind etchings. Contact me if you are interested in pre-purchase.
Link in bio to the Spotlight North Website. The map will be posted soon!
First glimpse of the Nucor Steel Plant. Probably t First glimpse of the Nucor Steel Plant. Probably the most amazing photo shoot I have ever been on. It will take me months to know what to do with the hundreds of images from this amazing day. Thank you Seattle plein air painters for this rare opportunity. Thank God we had dedicated minders to keep us from falling off the stairs and to help us adjust to the three layers of gear, hard hat, ear coverings, goggles, vest (hint: you need all of them!)

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