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You are here: Home / Archives for Iskra holiday sale

Iskra at Building C Open Studios Holiday Sale, December 4th

December 1, 2021 by Iskra Leave a Comment

A Suspended Structure, ©Iskra Fine Art

I am excited to be part of the Building C Open Studios this year, courtesy of AJ Power, who is hosting me as a guest artist in his studio on the second floor. I adore AJ’s work, and have had one of his magic bird images hanging on my wall for years. Building C is located at Leary Ave NW & 14th Ave NW in Ballard, “the big brown warehouse across from the Ballard Office Max.” Ample parking in the adjacent lot or on-street, enter on 14th Avenue. Building C is a hive of talent in many media, including painting, ceramics, jewelry and clothing from 24 artists. Open Saturday, December 4 from 12-7, masks required.

I will be showing work from the last two years of explorations in collage, photography and mixed media, as well as some brand new pieces. Most of the work has never been publicly shown outside of my blog or Instagram. I’m curious to get your eyes on it and see what you think! 

I have had requests recently for small works for gifts and small spaces, and so this year I am trying something different, with a new selection of framed pieces ranging in size from 6 x 6″ to 12″ as well as limited editions of prints on 13 x 19 and 8.5 x 11. For those who missed previous open studios where I offered my Venetian plaster botanicals, the remaining pieces will be here as well. Unlike a thematic show this is a chance to see every non sequiter and direction my artwork has explored, from the amber moods of the Sweet Old World to the blazing color and disrupted space of my architectural and maritime work. Below is a tiny sampling. 

The Nest print by Iskra
The Nest, ©Iskra Fine Art

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Art Sales, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: BuildingC Holiday Open House, Iskra holiday sale, Iskra Open Studios, Seattle Arts 2021, Seattle Open Studios December

Pandemic Angel Art from Iskra

November 27, 2020 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Painter's Angel with Moon

Painter’s Angel (with Moon), © Iskra Fine Art 

The Story of the Pandemic Angels

In September, the week of 9.11, I took a brief trip to Whidbey Island to escape the smoke from the California fires. For the first day the weather was balmy, with a perfectly clear blue summer sky. I wandered the beaches, filled my pockets with shells, and felt the euphoria of the traveler, a feeling I have missed acutely during the pandemic. Later that night the smoke came in. The horizon vanished, and whether to risk the outdoors became a calculation fraught with hazard. On my last day on the island, restless from being housebound, I went for a morning walk in nearby Woodsman cemetery. The air held a strange amber light, and pink smoke veiled the grave markers at the edge of the forest. I was captivated by the aura of the place, with its moss-covered headstones and weathered statuary dating from pioneer days. As I walked through the dry grass the angels seemed to emerge from the smoke like emissaries from another time. I began to study them and take their portraits.

I am a student of angels, and I had not seen these before. The faces of the little ones captured a blend of innocence and gravity that seemed both timeless and completely of our time. Beauty, grief, mourning, serenity, loss, longing for another time: the combined cataclysm of the fires and the pandemic require a vocabulary all its own. The phrase “smoke elegies” seemed to describe the mood in the air and the bigger moment. I decided then to do a series about the angels, (which got delayed by a journey to Tieton and the beginning of a photographic series of landscapes of the America West – but that’s another story!) Perhaps it is the coming of December, with its dark weather and mystic illuminations, but I woke up a few weeks ago possessed by the image of a winged statue. I decided to drop everything else on my plate and see where this body of work might go.

The archetype of the angel is far from my usual subject matter. Angels for many evoke religious associations, and as a result, for a contemporary artist it can feel precarious to go into this territory. For me angels do not represent religion, but instead act as a universal icon offering comfort, protection, rescue and transcendence. Their form is a devotional shape into which I can pour the unironic emotions of this time of isolation and worldwide loss. The pandemic has taken nearly 1.5 million lives world wide, and for many of those deaths there has been no ceremony of mourning, no bedside visitation, no funeral. A cemetery and the sense of ritual that accompanies it looks very different in the light of this new reality.

Homage to Faiyum angel print by Iskra

Homage to Faiyum, © Iskra Fine Art

Working on these images has been a contemplative and personally transformative process. The angels are built from a slow, painstaking method of collage that has led me on a path to rediscover what it was I saw in the smoke, at the edge of the woods. In the process I have researched the pictorial treatment of angels and marveled at the long fascination they have held for people through history, from ancient Crete to Victorian England all the way up to today’s video gamers in VR headsets. Some of these pieces reference the mourning theorems of American folk art, and others the shrouds of Faiyum. Others embrace Victorian intricacy and that era’s unabashed romance with sorrow. As I have been living with the faces of the angels I have also been living with history, and putting the present difficult moment into a deeper sense of time.

Pandemic Angel Iskra Print

Pandemic Angel, ©Iskra Fine Art

Devotional practice often focuses on one image and repeats it again and again. In my years as a calligrapher and student of Buddhism I might do one character from the Heart Sutra for weeks. In that tradition, I have chosen only a few images, and worked with them in sequence, finding more to understand each time I look at subtle differences in color, texture and context. The result is a series of prints in variant editions. They are created through my unique process of digital assemblage, built up with layer upon layer of subtle surface and color from my photographs and ink painting.  All of the prints are available in my shop, in a variety of sizes and prices. For the holiday season, everything in my shop is 20% off through January 2nd with a minimum purchase.

The collection to date is included here, as the resolution for retina display on WordPress is best in the blog rather than the portfolios. Click on any image to be taken to the listing.

Blue Angel Cherub Print by Iskra

Blue Angel [Read more…]

Filed Under: Art Sales, Digital Collage, Print Sale Tagged With: angel art, art in pandemic, cherubs and angels in art, contemplative art, fine art prints, Iskra holiday sale, mystic art, smoke elegies

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I’ve written a wild-mind sort of blog post in wh I’ve written a wild-mind sort of blog post in which I let the story of place, museums, witness and culture unfold as it wishes. It’s an old-style post before I had “newsletter consciousness.” (Sigh….when you send out a post with one image and a show announcement and maybe five more words and someone writes, “perfect length to view on my phone” you may be tempted to perform more of the same and forget the original muse, born long before success was judged by how well thoughts fit within 2x5” square inches. A few excerpts here and first link in bio to read the entirety. Witness and elegy is where I seem to live. Painting is acrylic ink on panel, a piece I have yet to resolve but like to see into for the next step.
If you are born on 9.11 take back this day. It’s If you are born on 9.11 take back this day. It’s still yours! Yesterday I started early and went to an island in the middle of the blue sea to be in beauty and celebrate life. As we walked the beach we met a young boy also born on 9.11. His parents had brought him to Vashon for the same reason, and he had found a perfect moon shell for his own birthday present sent from the sea. It was such a lovely moment, to remember the world is young no matter how old we are.
Taking the last golden days of summer for study. T Taking the last golden days of summer for study. The Volunteer Park museum has an exhibit showing the influence of the Edo arts in Japan on Toulouse-Lautrec and I went to see it last weekend. As you can see from these images, I seem to have no interest in Lautrec— True! But these details of woodcuts and paintings on silk fill me with a quiet rapture.
Walking Meditation Walking Meditation
RIP Brian McBride, The Stars of the Lid RIP Brian McBride, The Stars of the Lid
Sunday Morning Meditation: River and woods, stone Sunday Morning Meditation: River and woods, stone and light.

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