Search Results for: venetian plaster

Ode to Beauty: New Contemporary Botanicals

February 28, 2016 by Iskra Leave a Comment

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…]

Studio Visit with Muralist and Teacher Jennifer Carrasco

September 4, 2015 by Iskra 3 Comments

The Ruins mural, cougar painting, by Jennifer Carrasco — The great cougar, with shy otter and kingfisher. The Ruins. © Jennifer Carrasco

If you have ever attended a soiree at The Ruins, Seattle’s most exclusive and mysterious supper club, you may have looked up for a moment across the gilt rim of your absinthe and locked eyes with The Cougar. As your gaze moved from the patterning of leaves to the shy otter and then to the majestic drape of the big cat’s paws you may have found yourself wondering about the artist, and the style, which is an uncanny blend of ornament and botanical exactitude. The Cougar is but one panel in an epic mural that goes from ceiling to floor, creating an atmosphere of timeless excess and contemplation. Hearing the artist’s name was “Carrasco,” you might have assumed the work was done by some Italian guy imported from The Old Country to put a polish on the Northwest.

You would be right that the artist was imported, but he is a she, and she comes from the Inland Empire town of Pomeroy, next door to the Palouse. Jennifer Carrasco got her start in the dry scree and lazy rivers of the American west. There she fell in love with landscape and learned the stillness that comes of wandering quiet empty places. The oldest of four daughters, she was raised going to mass every Sunday and singing Gregorian chants. A close-knit town with deep roots, Pomeroy embodies the best of family, connection and continuity, but it’s also the kind of place an imaginative person might yearn to leave, just to see what’s beyond the hills. After getting her BA degree in art and education at WSU Jennifer took off for the big world.

She has led many lives, far beyond her small-town roots, as part of the Peace Corps in the Phillipines, as a mother, a poet, and as a painter and teacher in Japan, Alaska, and the deep South. By the time she landed back on the West Coast she had a wealth of artistic influences to draw from. Her assignment for the Ruins was to create a style of “Northwest Rococo,” and every detail of fauna and flora is researched and authentic, drawing on a year of research into painting styles, ornament, and museum artifacts and diaries from the early days of the Northwest Territories. [Read more…]

About

Iskra Johnson

A R T I S T

My art practice is rooted in the traditions of contemplative art, influenced greatly by my years as a student of Asian calligraphy and my ongoing design career as a calligrapher and letterform artist. I use many different media, but in all of them I attend closely to the language of mark-making and surface.

As principal of Iskra Design I have been working with the alphabet for many years, providing custom letterform solutions for book covers, logotypes, and package branding. In the first decade of my career I immersed myself in Asian calligraphy, haiga, T’ai Chi and sumie painting, studying with Lucy Liu, John Leong and Sensei Ishii among other teachers. After this period of Eastern influence I went to the University of Washington, completing a degree in painting with a secondary focus on printmaking (BFA). I draw inspiration from the interplay between the contemplative practices of Asian art and a perhaps more Western need for invention and uncharted chaos.

I bring my background in calligraphy into all of my work

Although my first love is printmaking, due to early exposure to solvents I have been unable to work in a traditional printmaking studio or with oil-based inks, and this has pushed me to devise my own methods to create the look and process of printmaking without a press. In much of my work I approach my surface as though it is a stone or metal plate, but the “plate” becomes the final piece of art, reflecting the same characteristics of mark-making found in etching and lithography. I love surfaces that are bitten and etched, indirect and calligraphic mark making, and experimental processes of monoprint which embed an element of surprise. I also adore flat screaming color and the graphic qualities of serigraph and stencils. I move between visual languages, always looking for an ambiguity of pictorial space and unexpected juxtapositions.

For the past five years I have focused primarily on how the atmosphere of emotion intersects with architectural structure. In my series about construction sites and the street I use contemporary digital photography, imaging software and found and made surface to explore nostalgia, loss, place and displacement in the rapidly changing urban environment. For me Photoshop is like playing jazz: it is the ultimate tool for improvisation. It allows me to deconstruct images into layers of light and color, line and shape, and reassemble them into imaginary worlds. The way the layers interact with each other opens up a new kind of pictorial composition unavailable in any other medium.

The physical form of my digitally composed work may be archival pigment print, transfer print, or mixed media. In digitally printed work my goal is to produce a work on paper, an artifact incorporating all the finesse and obsession with surface of traditional printmaking. The resulting images have a mysterious hybrid quality that is often taken for silkscreen or lithography.

German Etching, my favorite paper, beloved for its rich surface and the way it holds ink.

Recently I have begun a shift away from printmaking towards more direct processes, using mixed media on Venetian plaster and pure painting. In going back to what are in some ways traditional image media I am still very interested in what I think of as “photographicness.” This is a relatively modern phenomena, in which photography, which originally set out to imitate life and “painting from life,” has now become our visual reference point as a global culture. How does a way of seeing that is mediated by incredibly complex technology enter into our psychology as a collective/yet personal emotional filter? How does it influence our sense of what is “real,” “personal” or “authentic?” How do the qualities of surface in the daily interface of screens, phones, camera and facsimile begin to define what is beauty in other media? These are some of the questions guiding my work.

If you are interested in a studio visit or in purchasing prints or paintings you may write to me through the contact form in the navigation bar or email me at iskra (at) iskrafineart.com. My work may also be seen and purchased through Seattle Art Museum Gallery.

My office, where the digital alchemy happens.

SOLO/TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2018 ColorBath, Taste at SAM, Seattle Washington

2018 Industrial Pastorale, Perry & Carlson, Mt. Vernon, Washington

2014 Excavations: The Big Dig & Other Stories, Zeitgeist, Seattle, Washington

2012 The Black and White Show, Fraker/Scott, (two-person), Seattle, Washington

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017 Industrial Strength, Seattle Art Museum Gallery, Seattle Washington (Three-person)

2017 Splash, Chittendon Locks Centennial, Seattle, WA

2017 Make America Create Again, COCA, Seattle, Washington

2017 The Winter Show, Museo Gallery, Langley, Washington

2016 Tech and the Democratization of Art, Galvanize, Seattle Washington

2016 Contemporary Printmakers, Seattle Art Museum Gallery, Seattle Washington

2016 Confluence: The Duwamish River Project, Columbia City Gallery, Seattle Washington

2016 Annual Artist Exhibition, Kirkland Art Center, Seattle, Washington

2016 The Garden Show, Museo Gallery, Langley, Washington

2015 Seattle Seen, Linda Hodges Gallery, Seattle, Washington

2015 Zeitgeist, Arts at the Port, Anacortes, Washington, Stefano Catalani, curator

2015 Waterways, Alexis Hotel, Seattle, Washington

2014 Making & Breaking, Linda Hodges, Seattle, Washington

2014 Any Day, Artists on Death, Steele Gallery, Gage Academy, Seattle, Washington

2014 Seattle Art Museum Gallery, 14 new architectural works for May exhibition

2013 World/City: Exploring the Architecture of Global Relationships, Seattle Architectural Foundation, Seattle, Washington

2013 New Media: Digital Art, Bainbridge Arts & Crafts, Bainbridge Island, Washington

2013 Painters Under Pressure: A Decade of Discussion, Phinney Gallery, Seattle, Washington

2013 Seattle Art Museum Gallery, new architectural images for February Exhibition

2013 Watercolor Exhibit, Steele Gallery at Gage Academy, Seattle, Washington

2013 The Bleak View, Prographica Fine Works on Paper, Seattle, Washington

2012 Contemplations of Nature, Seattle Art Museum Gallery, Seattle, Washington

2011 Icons, Fraker/Scott, Seattle, Washington

2010 Safe Harbor, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, Port Angeles, Washington

2010 ArtSpace Printmaking and Photography Exhibition, Richmond, Virginia

2010 Seattle Print Arts, Patricia Cameron Gallery, Seattle, Washington

2009 Printmaking Exhibition, Wuhan Art Museum, Wuhan, China

2008 The Art of Democracy, Two Wall Gallery, Vashon, Washington

2008 Collective Visions Gallery Washington State Juried Competition, Bremerton, Washington

Studio photos and portrait by Ben Calhoun

The Natural World | Botanical Prints

Pyrus | Japanese Pear Apple | limited edition archival pigment print, two sizes
Magnolia Eva | Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print | Four sizes Available for purchase
Poppies Remembered | Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print | Two sizes Available for purchase
November | limited edition archival pigment print, two sizes Available for purchase
Milkweed, limited edition archival pigment print, two sizes. Available for purchase
Blue Poppies For Redon | Archival Pigment Print | size variable Available for purchase
Wild Plum, transfer print, 1/2 ev, 30" x 22" paper size, 21" x 16" image size
Contempler les Fleurs, transfer print, 1/2 ev, 30" x 22" paper size, 16.5" x 21" image size
Summerlight, transfer print
The Willows, unique print, 30" x 22" paper size, 22" x 16" image size
After the WInd, transfer print, 30" x 22" paper size, 21" x 16" image size
October, transfer print, 22.5" x 20" paper size, 16.5" x 15" image size
Lily of the Valley, transfer print, 30" x 22" paper size, 22" x 16.5" image size
Surface Tension, transfer print, 1/2 ev, 30" x 22" paper size, 16.5" x 21" image size
Robinia (Black Locust), 21" x 16", available as digital or transfer print
Pale Locust, 21" x 16", available as digital or transfer print
The Heron, transfer print, 1/2 ev, 30" x 22" paper size, 12" x 21" image size
The Reeds, transfer print sold out,digital edition available, on 17 x 22" sheet.

Inspired by my life as a gardener and a walker in the landscape, these images are composed of digitally layered pastel, watercolor, Venetian plaster and photography. Some are editioned as transfer prints and some are archival pigment prints. Many of these prints are available in my shop in the gallery Botanical Prints, or click through directly via the “available for purchase” link. Others can be purchase directly from me or through SAM Gallery.