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You are here: Home / Archives for Iskra shows

“Making and Breaking” at Linda Hodges

November 29, 2014 by Iskra Leave a Comment

I am excited to be part of the December show at Linda Hodges Gallery, curated by Dale Cotton. The artists gathered for this exhibition share my fascination with the aesthetics of the urban industrial landscape and its emotional undertow, the demolition of place and sense of home.

“Making and Breaking”

Dec 4, 2014 – Jan 3, 2015
1st Thursday Artist Reception, Dec 4, 6-8 pm

316 First Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98104
Gallery Hours: Tues. – Sat. 10:30-5:00
Tel: 206-624-3034
www.lindahodgesgallery.com

“Making and Breaking” is a group exhibition of paintings, sculpture, and photography devoted to things that are built and then erode, are altered, or destroyed over time. We are very much aware of this in the rapidly growing city of Seattle. Change is the operative factor, and technology, economic decision-making, and time are the implements that guide it. From Kevin Wilson’s steam shovels and Dan Webb’s wooden tools, to the weathered and abandoned barns of Daphne Minkoff and the proliferating housing developments depicted by Ryan Molenkamp, to Dara Solliday’s Regrade images, each artwork tells a story of growth, destruction, and change.”

Other artists in the show include: Patti Bowman, Laura Hamje, Daniel Hawkins, Jeff Mihalyo, Michael Paul Miller, Daphne Minkoff, Ryan Molenkamp, Jeff Scott, Dara Solliday, Timea Tihanyi, Sylwia Tur, Thuy-van vu, Dan Webb, Kevin Wilson, Dane Youngren

Below, one of the prints I will be showing. This piece is part of a series looking at the construction projects at the University of Washington. I stood for many hours on the University Bridge studying this dormitory as it went up. The complex is now finished, but I dearly loved the tarps and scaffolds: the “making” phase revealed, and here frozen in time.

Invisible Children, Archival Pigment Print
Invisible Children, Archival Pigment Print, © Iskra Johnson

Filed Under: Architecture & Sense of Place, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: art about change, art about place, art about urban renewal, December shows Seattle, Iskra shows, Linda Hodges, Making and Breaking

New Images About the Alaska Way Viaduct: Understory & Overstory

March 16, 2014 by Iskra 1 Comment

I have just completed several of the final new images for the upcoming “Excavations” show at Zeitgeist. One portion of the show will be a series of 10″ x 10″ transfer prints devoted to the ongoing saga of the Alaska Way viaduct. The images are created from my photographs of the viaduct layered with painted and drawn surfaces made in response. This is a place filled with industrial strength beauty: loud, dirty, sometimes hazardous but always provoking.

I have been photographing the viaduct for at least 25 years, and this iconic structure is an enduring object of affliction. Many of the collages are based on recent cellphone photos taken from a moving car. This is the glimpse, the rapture of the vista, the overstory. But this one, the most recent piece, uses as its backdrop an analog photograph I took over 20 years ago when the train tunnel could still be seen. I stood for hours one long gilded afternoon waiting for trains, and documented the graffiti as it changed color in the refracted sunlight of the bay. Now that tunnel is invisible, walled in behind condominiums. This is the understory. As with all of the images in this series reality has been subtly collaged and reconstructed.

Banksy Was Not Here: Street Buddha Manifestation
Banksy Was Not Here: Street Buddha Manifestation, Transfer print, © Iskra Johnson
Understory 1
Understory 1, Saturday 1 PM, Transferprint, © Iskra Johnson

Meanwhile, although the cracks are getting larger we still drive. Best view of the sky anywhere:

Drive-By In Orange: The Viaduct
Drive-By In Orange, Transferprint, © Iskra Johnson

Each transfer print originates from the same image, but the transfer process creates a unique monoprint each time, with different surface qualities and subtle variations in color. I often make only one print of an image, but in some cases the variations possible are too interesting to pass up. This particular print has several variants, as I experimented with the grain of the ink and application of the transfer medium. In this version I “wiped” the paper as I would a zinc plate, to get the organic washed quality of the sky.

Mark your calendar for the opening, First Thursday April 3rd, 6-8 at Zeitgeist. A reminder will come closer to the date.

Filed Under: Photocollage, Prints, The Alaska Way Viaduct Tagged With: Alaska Way Viaduct, graffiti in art, industrial art, Iskra shows, street art, street collage, tansfer prints, transferprint collage, understory in art, walls in collage, Zeitgeist coffee seattle

Opening tonight, “Digital Art: A New Generation” at Bainbridge Arts & Crafts

April 5, 2013 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Bainbridge Arts & Crafts Digital Art Postcard

 

Tonight is the opening for “Digital Art: A New Generation” at Bainbridge Arts & Crafts. I will be showing two transfer prints from the Natural World series and two prints from Construction/Reconstruction. Above is the image used for the postcard, which is the largest print I have done to date. It is inspired by the idea of walls, and the drama of inner and outer space that construction sites evoke before they become completed buildings. The University of Washington dormitory project has been a subject of fascination for me for months. This image was developed from photographs taken on the University Bridge while the scaffolding was up and the building was draped. Gotta love a multi-story building with a veil.

Filed Under: Construction/Reconstruction, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: Bainbridge Arts & Crafts, Digital Art Show, Digital Art: A New Generation, Iskra shows

Iskra in “Walk the Line” at Ida Culver

November 11, 2012 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Please join me for the opening reception of “Walk the Line” curated by June Sekiguchi this coming Wednesday. I will have two new prints on exhibit from the series “Construction/Reconstruction.”

November 14, 4:30-6:30

Ida Culver House

12505 Greenwood Ave. N, @ 125th Street, Seattle 98133

Wine, hors d’oeuvres and entertainment will accompany the art.
Complimentary parking provided.

“Walk the Line presents unique perspectives of expressing qualities of lines in abstract and figurative works in drawing, painting, photography and sculpture.”

Duwamish_Platform_collage
Duwamish Platform, Digital Mixed Media Collage, 16″ x 16″

Recent additions to this series can be seen in a new print portfolio here.

Filed Under: Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past Tagged With: Digital Mixed Media Collage, Iskra Johnson recent shows, Iskra shows, Walk the Line

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Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: Subtractive painting study and ground experiment: I added baking soda to my gesso. Pretty wild texture here, not sure yet how stable it is. You can see the test of the edges in the second piece— the rugged edge only works if I get a pristine background and unfortunately the tape I used to mask it did not work consistently. Hello tape, my old friend and nemesis. You work differently on every surface. These little barn structures give me great comfort as the bigger structures of our government and nation seem to be crumbling.
Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the Today’s landscape to quiet the mind. Out in the fields somewhere, on the road to Edison. Acrylic on prepared ground, sketchbook.
MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai We MUST SEE! Ai, Rebel: The Art and Activism of Ai Weiwei at Seattle Art Museum.
I am thinking this morning about the phrase Americ I am thinking this morning about the phrase American Heartland. Learning to paint a barn means studying the neutrals. Our political discourse has pitted the barn people against the city people and there are no neutrals, just shouting. But if you walk out into the horizon lands, all you hear is the wind and a kestrel. Walk in boots, hard-pressed against your toes, walk on stubble barefoot and get acupuncture for a lifetime. Study the intervals: how the clouds can be in the upper one third neatly or one sixth, precarious, the future disappearing with the sun as it falls making the barn your whole world if you’re three years old and looking up; one big triangle with a square in the center, and so many mysteries inside the square. 

There is also the question of what kind of light seeps between the verticals and is the light coming in the evening or at midday when you can finally begin to make out all the other tiny squares within the big square, which would be called hay. Reach for the rope and swing out over the canyon, that great big canyon from bale to bale.

Collage studies: painting neutrals
A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yor A hybrid study, mixed process. Reading the New Yorker this morning, about the global population crash. This will upend urbanism, for sure, though it will very good for veterinarians and dog groomers:
“Only two communities appear to be maintaining very high fertility: ultra-Orthodox Jews and some Anabaptist sects. The economist Robin Hanson’s back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that twenty-third-century America will be dominated by three hundred million Amish people. The likeliest version of the Great Replacement will see a countryside dotted everywhere with handsome barns.”
First Thursday. Such a beautiful night. First Thursday. Such a beautiful night.

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