Iskra Fine Art

Jim Dine at Wright Gallery | The Last Days of Dexter Avenue (As We Knew It)

by 2 Comments

It’s a day when the news provokes long discussions of despair and bewilderment on my social media feeds. I find myself in a desperate ricochet between fear of plague, spreading wildfire and epic drought, and I can’t stop thinking of the numbers in Gaza, numbers attached to bodies, bodies attached to the fact of children and hospitals and schools and what can only look to me like slaughter of a trapped people. I hold up a dollar bill and consider what part of it to tear off to protest my taxes going to mortars and grenades.

As I sit in miles of hot stalled traffic I feel increasingly bludgeoned by things beyond my control. This traffic jam is brought to the Emerald City by the Blue Angels. Each summer the freeway closes to honor the Navy’s elite flight squad and the quaint ritual of military preening that carves the sky with white ribbons and shatters eardrums of those below. All I feel as I watch the jets dive between skyscrapers and lilt upward from my rear view mirror is dread. Gaza seems right here, right here in my lap.

I am on my way to see the Jim Dine exhibit at Wright Gallery. [Read more…]

In Neutral: The Gray Muse of Ebey’s Landing

by 2 Comments

Unarranged Arrangement
Unarranged Arrangement, Ebey’s Landing, © Iskra Johnson

“The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you’re supposed to go up and down when you’re supposed to go down. When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there’s no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.”
                      ― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I think there is no better place for me to understand equanimity than the slender borderline between land and sea. To walk the shore on a gray day, with a warm wind in my hair and clouds low on the horizon, to become completely lost in the large rocks and the pebbles and the sand, finer and finer gradations of gray and brown and white and coral that the sea tosses up and time burnishes. It’s the middle path. No chasing after sunsets or epiphanies, [Read more…]

The Green Ladder | Variant Edition

by Leave a Comment

I have been experimenting today with color. Lurid wild-child Aurora color, for an image that captured me as I was wandered the bleaker spaces of this territory last week. Hot midday sun, a lot of dirt, and the glory of green. Aurora, AKA Highway 99 is a riot of color theory once you get over bad taste, disregard, and what I used to think of as ugliness. Now it’s all just material, and life on the edge is looking good.

I am thinking of a new approach to digital printmaking. Instead of focusing on editions of 20 in which every print is identical, I am returning to the ancient analog idea of the “variant edition” in which the plate (the basic “file” or photo/image composite) is the same, but one makes subtle shifts to each print. The editions will be very small, perhaps 3 or 5. Here are some takes on the newest piece done in this mode. I am still proofing, so I am not sure yet what scale will suit these best.

construction site collage
Structure Study (1)

[Read more…]

Studio Visit with Paula Gill, Bremerton Tilemaker, Printmaker, Artist

by 1 Comment

Once a month I meet with a very special group of creative entrepreneurs to critique art in progress, celebrate completed projects and share spectacular food. Over the 14 years we have been meeting two of our members have moved out of Seattle to the Kitsap Peninsula, and so twice a year we caravan on a ferry to meet at their studios.

Last month we met in Bremerton, at the tile studio of Paula Gill. Paula works surrounded by a rambling country garden exploding with vegetables and bouquets. Everywhere you look there is something to make you smile. It was a beautiful day in an environment designed to nourish the spirit. [Read more…]

Join Iskra’s Mailing List

Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to receive show announcements, first peek at new work and my semi-monthly blog by email. I primarily use the blog for news and updates but by signing up you will also receive the occasional newsletter and special offers for items in my shop.