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New Work Emerging from the Dark of November

November 29, 2016 by Iskra Leave a Comment

"Celadon" industrial waterscape by Iskra
“Celadon,” limited edition archival pigment print on canvas and paper. 40 x 40 inches.

“Surely one of the most magnificent feats of the human brain is its ability to hold past, present, future and their imagined alternatives in constant parallel, to offset the tedium of washing dishes with the chance to be simultaneously mentally in Bangkok, or in Don Draper’s bed . . . .What differentiates humans from animals is exactly this ability to step mentally outside of whatever is happening to us right now, and to assign it context and significance.”— Ruth Whippman

In the aftermath of the election I find Ruth Whipmann’s essay “Actually, Let’s Not Be in the Moment” particularly compelling. I may have company in the desire to be elsewhere, rather than in this new country that feels like an audition for the ’80’s or other even less hospitable eras, perhaps 1016 or so. I am grateful for the extraordinary lifewire of the artists, writers and activists on social media who are doubling down on beauty and various forms of creative activism. After a three-day collective bender most in my circle are back to work and on fire to make the most of every precious moment. The determination is contagious. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Photocollage, Prints Tagged With: art inspired by Leonard Cohen, limited edition prints, nature art, news from iskra, November, the maersk line

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Morning pages. Reading Wallace Stevens’ ‘13 wa Morning pages. Reading Wallace Stevens’ ‘13 ways of looking at a blackbird’ for the thousandth time and finding it completely new.
Hello solo travelers….are we odd to love the sol Hello solo travelers….are we odd to love the solitude of taking in a place with every one of our senses, unmitigated by the relational bypass legislated by the need to tend to whether the Other is: okay/happy/comfortable/entertained etc…? Tonight I’m sharing notes on my (new) dedicated weekly visit to the travel state of mind, in which I go somewhere in public as though I was a tourist and read and write and armchair travel. 

I love company, don’t get me wrong. I have traveled with, and without. Evenings are not always at ease. In 1990 I went to a Typography Conference in Oxford. Dropped my luggage a week ahead and took a train to the Lakes. Me and every honeymooning couple of the year, in 19th century bed and breakfasts (all booked by pre-internet postal and phone call.) Horsehair mattresses, pineapple-carved bedposts. Two other non-honeymooning people were allowed into the 40-mile square Lakes that month. They did not make eye contact. 

So it was me and Beatrix Potter, and the “jacket potato”, an unfortunate menu staple that involved baked beans + baked potatoes (in far too close proximity) alone with our observations writing letters home to whichever boyfriend it was left behind. (Here I gracefully omit the grand ball under the tent on the Thames back at the conference and everything that happened after. . .) The Thames is why the British invented elipses. 

I had told myself on some errant Tuesday that England was the size of Whidbey Island. It was a rare lapse, in which I completely forgot: world history? Oh, wait, the Beatles. + King Arthur. Stones and tables and swords. Forgive me while I go re-watch the intro to #Outlander….

Daunting to study the guidebook and realize I should have started this project when I was 11. I have been to England three times. I cannot fathom how I thought I could go again and not want to see everything: every cathedral, flea market, moody moor, outsider mural and Arabic bakery, cinematically filtered through a modern mashup of Virginia Woolf and Peaky Blinders.
Amid the clamor and noise of our online lives I fi Amid the clamor and noise of our online lives I find myself sometimes seeking very simple places to land. What better place to land then water? In the series of architectural works in progress one of my subjects is the Chittenden Locks. You can’t have the locks without the water that lives to be raised and lowered. These subtle tethers between invisible guide posts and unseen actors offstage speak to me not just of infrastructure and industry, but of our connections to one another. 

I live in a city that has decided resolutely that Zoom is the same as actual conversation. The model embraced here is “if it looks good, as a facsimile, it’s probably good enough.” What a loss for all of those who have spent a lifetime in a craft perfecting real things. Serif, proportion, texture, text— all made visible through touch. One tug of a rope, one breath of wind, and this whole image redesigns itself. With photographic art I can make images without ever smearing paint or lifting out. I touch with my eyes and mind. What makes it human is metaphor. What keeps you tethered to this world, and to others?
Work in progress: Seattle icons of place and archi Work in progress: Seattle icons of place and architecture. This piece harkens to another time. Old world rotogravure, lithography, the specimen studies of explorers first seeing the tropics, or the to-them “new world.” Also to the early psychedelic history of Seattle, where if your UW professor was missing in class he might be sitting in one of the mythic cedars at Volunteer Park, or cactus gazing in the steamy other-world of the conservatory. It was a magical time, and the park was the incandescent center. 

The way I work is by deconstructing the real into many subtle layers of color and tint and tone, and then recomposing as though each piece of photographic information was a plate. In my architectural images and botanical work a piece like this can go back-and-forth for a long time between realism and atmosphere and I never know until the very last step exactly where it will land.
Best way to contemplate landscape and travel is by Best way to contemplate landscape and travel is by candlelight.
Study of place, Volunteer Park Conservatory. I sta Study of place, Volunteer Park Conservatory. I start my morning pages with barely formed questions: 

What is a dream? Is a glass house safe or waiting to be broken? What is the effect of layering and repetition, a note repeated more and more softly without elaboration?

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