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You are here: Home / Archives for Iskra shows

Iskra Johnson and Alfred Harris in Intersect at SAM Gallery

August 1, 2023 by Iskra Leave a Comment

I am excited to show a new abstract body of work created from my calligraphic brush painting. It is an honor to show with Alfred Harris, a longtime favorite Northwest artist whose work always surprises. I look forward to seeing you August 5th!

Waterfall by Iskra in Intersect at SAM Gallery

Waterfall 1/1, Mixed Media Archival Pigment Print on German Etching, 24 x 35

INTERSECT

AUG 5 2023

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

SAM GALLERY

2 PM – 4 PM

Join us as we celebrate the opening of Intersect at SAM Gallery.

Artists Alfred Harris and Iskra Johnson combine techniques and materials which are altered, layered and built up to create finished works which harmoniously intersect in this collection.

Meet the artists at the opening reception of Intersect on Saturday, August 5.


Seattle Art Museum Gallery Hours: 10-5 Wednesday – Sunday. Located on the street level of the Seattle Art Museum, on 1st Avenue between Union and University Streets. 206.654.3120

Filed Under: Abstract Calligraphy, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: Intersect at SAM Gallery, Iskra Abstract ink painting, Iskra shows, SAM Gallery, Seattle August art openings

Recent Monoprints and an Upcoming Show

June 25, 2021 by Iskra Leave a Comment

 

Color Theory Painting Studies Iskra
Color Studies, Studio Work

As we emerge from the pandemic into summer I have good news to report: Seattle Art Museum and SAM Gallery are close to fully reopening! I will be part of a group show in late summer with two other printmakers, Tallmadge Doyle and Jueun Shin. In conjunction with SAM’s Monet exhibit the theme will be water, which I am guessing you may welcome after what could be some very hot months ahead. As post-pandemic plans finalize it is best before visiting to call the gallery and shop (206.654.3120) to learn the latest updates on procedures. At this point access is available Wednesday-Sunday 10-5 without a museum ticket, although the museum website does not yet reflect this.

Water is also the theme of a piece selected for the exhibit Art in the Time of Corona, which features my piece “Ledger” on Artsy.  The goal of this innovative project is to record and exhibit defining artwork created during civil uncertainty. The hope is to unite viewers and help them find the sanctity, comfort and inspiration needed to heal a world in turmoil.

Over the past six months I have been sorting ideas and directions and keeping my studio practice focused on process. Printmaking has been a throughline of all my work for decades, and as part of my year of media exploration I decided to take one more look at “old fashioned” printing with a press, using water-based Akua inks. With help from an associate in Seattle Print Arts I set up my Baby Richeson press, which has been sitting neglected in a dark corner for nearly 20 years. It was mesmerizing to combine the folded paper collage I started doing earlier this year with the press, and I often found myself printing until 1 or 2 in the morning, experimenting with drypoint, monoprint and various forms of chine collé. Very few of these pieces will ever see a public wall, but the interplay between developing ideas in drawing and watercolor and then moving to a the press will be useful for years to come.

Wave Patterns Monoprint by Iskra
Wave Patterns: a monoprint created with Golden Paints open acrylic. Open acrylic is completely amazing. As I struggled with the Akua inks and their honey-based chemistry, which seems to not-dry, like – ever?, I turned to paint instead. I love the fluidity of this modern medium, and its sensitive mark-making possibilities.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Digital Collage, Drawing, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Painting Tagged With: American Flag in art, Duwamish landscape, harbor island, industrial art, Iskra printmaking, Iskra shows, monoprints, SAM Gallery reopens, the golden hour

Iskra Fine Art #100DayProject and the Garden Show at Museo

March 30, 2020 by Iskra Leave a Comment

The Space Between Train Collage

(See the Motion version on Instagram.)

It has been only 20 days since I last wrote here, and yet in that time the world is completely changed. Millions of people across the globe are now confined to their homes as modern life as we have known it shuts down in the face of the corona virus. The profound sense of isolation in the studio, combined with the media’s constant drumbeat of dystopia pushed me for several weeks close to despair. Forced to look at the books on my shelves (and consider reading them) I came across Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In it, the draft of a calligraphic treatment of a quote: A single metaphor can give birth to love.

With galleries closed and shows delayed or cancelled, and with a sense of life or death urgency and helplessness heavy in the air, motivation for working in the studio has been in question. But the quote, and its tissue paper flourishes, lingered in my mind. I think it was its echo that led me to realize that this is the time, after years of thinking about it, to take on #The100DayProject. Under house arrest in my pajamas, there is no escape. And certainly nothing to lose.

The One Hundred Day Project was first introduced in 2007 by designer Michael Bierut as a challenge to his graduate students at Yale. The outlines were simple: “Do a design operation that you are capable of repeating every day. Do it every day for one hundred days.” The project was brought onto social media by Elle Luna in 2014 and has become a platform for reinvention with global reach through Instagram.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Botanical Art, Collage, Drawing, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Iskra Sketchbooks & Journals, The 100 Day Projects Tagged With: #Artinisolation, #covidcollaboration, #social distancing, #the100DayProject, Iskra shows, Museo Gallery 2020, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Iskra in Under the Influence, Opening December 5 at SAM Gallery

November 22, 2019 by Iskra 1 Comment

Plum Wine Iskra SAM Show
“Plum Wine,” limited edition print on panel, 24 x 36 © Iskra Johnson
You are invited to the opening of

Under the Influence

at SAM Gallery
December 5, 6 – 7:30 PM
Seattle Art Museum, 1300 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101

Artists influenced by Asia are featured in SAM Gallery’s final show of the year. I am excited to be part of this group of artists including Deborah Bell, Alfred Harris, Laura Van Horne and Junko Yamamoto. Each of us is influenced by Asia in very different ways, involving surface, paper, collage, markmaking and photographic innovations. Join in this festive opening and celebrate the Asian influence on Northwest Contemporary art.

My work in this exhibit will show a new way of presenting my work on panel. The limited edition prints are meticulously mounted and sealed in layers of cold wax medium, which creates a subtle hand crafted sheen. Without traditional framing the work becomes an immediate experience of surface and color, unimpeded by reflections. The surfaces are hard to photograph, but here is a capture in the studio showing “As Above So Below,” one of the works that will be shown. If you would like to preview and reserve before the opening I will have these pieces in the studio through next Tuesday before they are delivered to the gallery. Give me a shout and I would be happy to show you in person. There will be an edition of 5 available for each piece, framed traditionally in plexiglass and brushed silver, or mounted in cold wax on panel. All sales through SAM Gallery.

Archival print mounted on panel by Iskra
Print mounted on panel with cold wax
“The Heron,” archival pigment print mounted on panel © Iskra Johnson

 I look forward to seeing you to celebrate the launch of the winter holidays!

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Prints Tagged With: Asian-inspired art, Cold wax on prints, Iskra at SAM Gallery, Iskra shows, Under the Influence

Invitation to Museo Gallery’s “Playlist” Show

January 23, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Listening to Bill Frisell print by Iskra
“The Break, 1/5” © Iskra Johnson 26 x 34 archival pigment print on German Etching.

Museo Gallery on Whidbey Island opens its first exhibit for the new year, “Museo’s Playlist” on Saturday night, February 2 from 5-7. The show continues through February 24th and will include a wide range of interpretations from the gallery artists. The invitation to submit work on the theme of music sent me back a few years to a moment that I have never forgotten, the debut of Bill Frisell’s “Big Sur”at Earshot Jazz. I came home from that performance transformed, and did a series of work called “Listening with an Innocent Ear,” in response. The series of work started with one charcoal drawing in black and white, deconstructed and transformed into color, much as music transforms one’s mood. “The Break” is about the moment when a jazz riff goes into uncharted territory.

When I revisited the work to refine, print and frame for the show I realized I wanted to go back to this theme, and have begun a new exploration of both the original compositions and some completely new ideas based on calligraphic ink drawing. I am super excited about the new directions, and urge you to visit me at Instagram to see the process evolve. Here is a variation on the original, and a glimpse of what’s ahead.

Intersection Music Print by Iskra
“Intersection, 1/5” © Iskra Johnson, archival pigment print on German Etching.
Iskra Ink Painting to Music
Improvisation Number 7, Ink on Paper

See process videos at #ink stories. My hand-held video skills may improve with a dive into some apps and hardware, coming soon. Meanwhile the main apps are my ears and my hands.

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: Art about music, calligraphic painting, Iskra Ink Painting, Iskra shows, Langley, listening with an innocent ear, Museo Gallery 2019, Whidbey Island

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

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I am getting ready to start a new photographic-bas I am getting ready to start a new photographic-based series that I’ll be working on for the next six months. A friend here on Instagram gave me these praying hands years and years ago. They are quietly gaudy, and awful and simultaneously completely wonderful. I see them every day when I wake up in a house that I will confess is filled with devotional objects. This image is composed of two photographs, the sculpture and a street kiosk. When I walk down the streets, I cannot resist documenting kiosks, particularly when they are empty. The shredded strange paint residues and the battered metal frames are just waiting to be re-purposed as though the entire street was my personal goodwill junk department. Or you could call it a library. My cross training for the series is reading Virginia Woolfs stream of consciousness, novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf’s writing gives an artist permission to own their interior world. Of course, letting the exterior world in on the secret can be quite a task. That is, what studio time is for…
I am thankful today for the symmetries of friendsh I am thankful today for the symmetries of friendship, even when they are asymmetric; for the guidance of those in the temple, who have practiced for years and send us their notes and their breathing lessons; thankful for the leaf that my friend saved for me of all the leaves in her neighborhood and thankful to the man who came yesterday when my back had laid me flat to sweep and to blow, as he noted in his documentation, 95% of the leaves in my garden, into piles then compressed with military precision into small liftable bundles stacked like muffins under the eaves. Now we can look out at the spare empty spaces. Feel the freedom of silence and space between branches. Rest, as growth goes quiet and invisible in the best growing season of the year.

May your Thanksgiving be bright✨
Artist Reception at SAM Gallery tomorrow, Seattle Artist Reception at SAM Gallery tomorrow, Seattle Art Museum First Avenue level, 2-4! Hope to see you there for our group show celebrating 50 years(!) This piece is called Water Kimono, a reverie on the ever-changing patterns of light on water.
My Narnia My Narnia
Last night I tried to get through more than 20 min Last night I tried to get through more than 20 minutes of the Golden Bachelor. It was Pickleball-date afternoon. The Golden Bachelor, truly a lovely man to observe and listen to under normal circumstances delivered this line: “Pickleball is a regular part of my life. Any woman who is going to share my life must also share Pickleball.” 

God help us. I’ve never been able to hit a ball with a paddle or a sock or a bat or anything else. Combat sports, like music, are abstract. No matter how much I pre-visualize the zen moment, the ball somehow remains in the air unrelated to my weapon of choice. I want to see the next Golden Bachelor rewritten for painters. “He said, fingering the smear of cadmium on his eyebrow, “Painting is a very big part of my life, and any woman who marries me is going to have to live with Painting.” Will he also say “I hope she paints too?” And we’ll have a full time maid and cook? Or will he say “She must be able to bring me my pipe and my slipper at the end of the day. And take the dogs for long walks alone while I try to decide the color of the sky?”

Feel free to write the script below.
A time and memory experiment. Photography captures A time and memory experiment. Photography captures a moment in light. You put the moment away for 30 years, lose the album several times, and then it resurfaces, the old analog print in perfect form. What happens if the small print is then scanned and enlarged? And revisited as the half-forgotten? This image from Koyasan was printed small in the first run and did not look like much of anything. On 17 x 22 it is lovely, and at full size of 24 x 36 it is something else altogether. Unlike enlargements of digital photographs analog images are simply soft, without the artifacts of pixel interpolation. How curious that what was originally 4x6 looks best at least 400% larger.

Photography is such a powerful tool to explore memory and what it means to forget and remember. The idea that we must live authentically in the “Now” (or that there IS a “now” unfiltered by the past) is perplexing for a meaning seeker. I always have a memory, no matter how small and distant, crumpled in my back pocket. Perhaps like homeopathic tinctures the smaller the memory the more space it can fill.

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