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You are here: Home / Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past / Seattle Art Fair and Satellite Events, July – August 2015

Seattle Art Fair and Satellite Events, July – August 2015

July 24, 2015 by Iskra Leave a Comment

“The Seattle Art Fair will showcase the vibrant culture and diversity of the Pacific Northwest by building on the region’s existing momentum to create a truly unique, innovative art event that will further establish Seattle as an influential player in the global art landscape.” — Seattle Art Fair

Emeral City Skyline, photocollage by Iskra
Photocollage © Iskra Johnson

Seattle artists and collectors are buzzing, in their quiet Northwest way, about the opening of the Seattle Art Fair next week. There is so much happening!! Yes, it deserves two exclamation points. To get the big picture, preview the official fair at Artsy. Visit the fair’s events page to see the line up of lectures, site-specific work, and partâys, chief among them the gala fund raiser opening benefiting Artist Trust. Many of Seattle’s finest will be participating, as well as an impressive roster of the best galleries from Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Asia and Great Britain. Thank you Vulcan for bringing the world to our city.

The Seattle artist community has rallied with an astonishing line-up of satellite art exhibits and events running concurrently over the course of a week. I don’t know how I will choose what to do, because I want to see everything. I’m a jeans and earrings person, so the burning question is what am I going to wear?? I think I will call Kelley. Maybe she can loan me an ensemble or two. Since the official Art Fair is pretty well publicised I thought I would use this space to give some ink to the satellite events and exhibits that will be happening around the fair and concurrently.

Out of Sight at King Street Station

From Vital 5, and curated by Kirsten Anderson, Sharon Arnold, Greg Lundgren and Sierra Stinson, this 24,000 square foot survey of contemporary art in the northwest will showcase 80 emerging and mid-career artists:

Vital 5 Productions has a long history of championing contemporary art in the Pacific Northwest. Since the mid-1990s, we have been producing exhibits, events, experiments and creative content that celebrates all that makes our region so dynamic, original, and largely out of sight. When we heard about Vulcan producing the first annual Seattle Art Fair in the summer of 2015, it was almost immediate that we wanted to support the fair and harness the international attention the fair will bring to Seattle. From this energy emerged a new exhibition opening July 30th in the historic King Street Station.

You can try running between the two openings, The Official One and Out of Sight because they are within a few blocks of each other. Tickets to Out of Sight opening night and fair can be purchased at Stranger Tickets. Keep track of Out of Sight on Facebook and Instagram.

Satellite Seattle

Thanks to the initiative of Seattle artist and entrepreneur Kate Sweeney we have Satellite Seattle:

Satellite Seattle is a new website designed to showcase and celebrate the richness of arts culture in Seattle. Aggregating and presenting an exciting schedule of activities in orbit around the Seattle Art Fair, events across the city will be included in one site that will have information on venues, events, artists, maps and opportunities to participate.

Satellite Seattle will also be hosting four days of events designed to share and appreciate the talent of our city, working in partnership with Northwest Film Forum, Yellowfish, Capitol Hill Arts District, Studio Current and New TMRW, with artists and venues focused on Capitol Hill.

Check out their calendar of events, and while you’re at it put Vanguard Seattle and City Arts on your reading list. I’m sure the smart people there will have some trenchant observations about this week long art circus.

Art of the City

In around the infamous TK Building and farther afield, take a look at the lineup for Art of the City. Arts, Music, Performance, open lofts, in the electric heart of Pioneer Square’s art scene. If you are visiting Seattle from out of town why don’t you just settle in for awhile?

Collect

The wonderful people at Collect are cultural partners with Seattle Art Fair. On Saturday, August 1, they will be running circulator busses to take participants to offsite events. Your ticket entitles you to a VIP pass to the fair, which includes access to the preview party on July 30th. Check out Collect on their Facebook page.

Seattle Art Museum Gallery Artists at Seattle Art Fair

Come visit SAM Gallery and see a special show in celebration of the Seattle Art Fair. I will be exhibiting in the company of many other artists who’s work I adore, including Warren Dykeman, Kate Sweeney, Linda Davidson, Troy Gua, and Kate Protage. One of my pieces from the show is below.

The Green Bridge, Archival Pigment print, by Iskra
The Green Bridge, Limited Edition Archival Pigment print © Iskra Johnson

That’s the round-up! If I missed something do shoot me a note and I will either add it into the text here or publish your comments.

 

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: arts events Seattle, Out of Sight, Satellite Seattle, Seattle Art Fair, Seattle arts, Seattle summr

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Iskra Fine Art Blog

the creative process | conversations with artists | the contemplative impulse in art

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Today’s mood, from the morning walk. Today’s mood, from the morning walk.
A metaphysical idea waiting to become a drawing. A A metaphysical idea waiting to become a drawing. All day I have been studying graphite, the most evanescent of mediums. Fragility. Once you break the egg, scatter the nest, leave the children without family on an abandoned beach, what then? 

I have spent the day drawing. In the background, which becomes foreground with one click, is the news of the rounding up of another thousand or so human beings by bounty hunters given a quota, thrown into concrete cages and disappeared because someone decided that America is no longer the home of the #huddledmasses.

The plaque on the Statue of Liberty says:

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Noem and Holman have not, apparently, run their hands over these words.

How do you continue making art at a time like this? You chase the metaphor. There is always a constant truth beneath the chaos.
Media studies. Addition and subtraction. Media studies. Addition and subtraction.
Somehow, between checking the news and the usual d Somehow, between checking the news and the usual distractions I managed to complete a drawing. Going back to the beginning: drawings in dust. 9.5 x 12” Charcoal powder, compressed charcoal, charcoal pencil on Moleskine. I feel peaceful for the first time in weeks.
The train tracks that go along Golden Gardens and The train tracks that go along Golden Gardens and pause briefly at the locks create a rupture in the city landscape. When the trains go by, the roar and squeal is like a thousand wild animals let out of their cage, and the ducks in the pond at the edge of the park shudder and dive under the water. A little farther north at Carkeek there is someone every year who steps in front of the train and whoever witnesses that is never the same. 

Sometimes the cargo containers are filled with coal, uncovered, and I have been part of demonstrations, which included polar bears and Orcas, objecting to that. Now, as we are being asked to casually accept nuclear reactors on every block as the price of having artificial intelligence, coal and its simple visible dust might look a little more friendly. The train brings with it economics and politics and life and death and class and all the people on the beach are just trying to have a moment in the sun. And the boaters at the marina, if they have finished polishing and descaling and mending the sails are lying back with a guitar and getting lost in the mountains. If you are willing to live right next to the train tracks, you can pay a much lower price for your home, but your dreams will change. I have lived next to the train tracks when I was very, very small and every night I woke up screaming and ran across the floor in the beams of the streetlight looking for safety. I have woken up in a train yard on a bed of cardboard and gotten on the train in the dark. Only when you do that, do you know just how hard metal is.

I’ve been drawing recently from life and this study was done from a photograph. It drove me crazy trying to see details that I couldn’t really see and feel them with the pencil. I’ve abandoned the drawing for now, but I learned a great deal about perseverance and obliteration and re-perseverance. Also how machines pretend that they are perfectly symmetrical and are not. And when you don’t draw them with perfection, they look just plain wrong so you have to make them more perfect than they are, at least when they are in perspective.
Tonight’s abandoned bird. The next one will be bet Tonight’s abandoned bird. The next one will be better. I’ve never tried to draw a Robin before. I’ve been obsessed with them since David Lynch sent them over to my childhood house, where they spent day and night getting drunk on the holly berries outside the kitchen window. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about google Laura Dern, Blue Velvet. And the Robin. It’s a hymnal to the good and the normal, done absolutely abnormally. I am learning all kinds of amazing things about how Robins build their nests. They start with mud. I did not know this. And in a drought, they will drag straw into a birdbath to get it wet and then drag the straw over a wormhole. Robins build their nests in the most unlikely places: drain spouts, highway overpasses, really bad motel parking lots. It’s kind of like how people find third place in community, even in the bleakest places. A franchise McDonald’s where people become regulars and always get the fries and just the fries because that’s all they can afford is a similar statement of naive valor: people talking to strangers and becoming known and taking shelter where they can. And if they leave a shredded napkin out there by their car, it will end up woven in with the straw and the leaves and the cigarette butts perched up there in the nest on the backside of the billboard.

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