Iskra Fine Art

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Composition en Route to Georgetown

December 9, 2011 by Iskra Leave a Comment

God I love the backs of trucks. Late afternoon winter light, a miracle around here, where foggy smudgy is the rule. A long drive to get supplies at Grainger, where all the men wear overalls and the women tuck their hair under hardhats and don’t smile much. I fell in love with this truck on Fourth Avenue South. My phone went low res, but after some finessing I think the compositional magic is clear. Renaissance light, theme and variation, and subject matter with a purpose: Workin, workin, get outta my way.

Georgetown_Truck_Photo

 

Filed Under: Photography, Recent Posts Tagged With: art made while driving, cellphone art, cellphone photo

Wayfinding: The Walking Man Goes Shopping at Night

December 8, 2011 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Still under the influence of the recent piece at NeuroTribes (how I wish I had thought of that name!)  on the evolution of the first icons for personal computing. I am temporarily abandoning leaves and the druid-watch of autumn melancholies for pure urban you-r-here-nowness. When I am no longer in love with the Walking Man, when the affair is over, you will be the first to know. Meanwhile, here we are, being told what to do and when to do it, in this case: Stop, LookBothWays, go Forward, protected in the night, — to buy dinner.

The_Walking_Man_at_Night
The Walking Man at Night, © Iskra Johnson

This image was captured with a cellphone. No traffic tickets were incurred in the making, although it was close. I am going to enlarge this about a 20 or 30 times and print it and see what happens, to see if the intimate space of the phone can scale up and what that feels like. I do so love the 2 by 3 inch jewels of my Droid. Perhaps we will return to the age of stereoscopes, and entire museum exhibits will be set up to witness modern life in the Victorian mode.

Filed Under: Photography, Recent Posts Tagged With: art about icons, driving while printmaking, prints of icons, the walking man icon

Icons Under the Influence: New Digital Etching

December 6, 2011 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Today, under the influence of the feature from Neurotribes on the sketchbooks of Susan Kare  this new street print came together. I have been madly in love with the bicycle icon for years, more so as the original ones have been blasted and worn by the treads of time and become so exquisitely beat up. It is thrilling to look at Susan’s sketches and see the embryonic beginnings of the icon-life we take for granted today. When I look at the grid of the street and how it interacts with paint I can see the pixel principle, but thrown for an anarchist loop. I have driven or walked across this particular bicycle icon hundreds of times, and I think I can take credit for just a small fraction of its wabi sabi. This is a collage of etched paper, powdered pigment and photography printed as a transfer print on Arches 88.

Bike Icon Transfer Print
Bike Icon, transfer print on Arches 88, © Iskra Johnson

To see my portfolio in icon and lettering design visit Iskra Design. My blog about letterforms, icons and alphabetic ephemera is Alphabet Roadtrip, which is where I also post my most recent book cover and design work.

Filed Under: Prints, Recent Posts, Transfer Prints Tagged With: bicycle icon, digital etching, new transfer prints, print of bicycle icon, Susan Kare

The Reeds: Surface Tension

December 2, 2011 by Iskra

Every time I circle the Lake I stop and look at the reeds. Which ones have been broken by the heron since yesterday? Which one  snapped in the wind and now crosses its neighbor? The conversation changes slowly, infinitely, accompanied by wind and rain and the arc of the winter sun.

Surface-Tension_transfer print_Greenlake
Surface Tension, 1/2 ev, 30" x 22" paper size, 16.5" x 21" image size

This is the plate before printing. It will be a mixed media transfer print, 16 by 22 inches.

Filed Under: Greenlake, Transfer Prints Tagged With: photographic transfer print, print of nature and reflections, print of water and reeds, reflections in art

Ambiguity and Beauty

November 28, 2011 by Iskra Leave a Comment

This morning I am at work on the idea of  the screen, as in a real analogue screen made of paper or silk, and the long tradition in Asian art of dividing the landscape into panels. When I walk around the lake, particularly in Autumn, when the leaves are so perfectly missing in places and hanging by a golden thread in others, I feel like I am walking right into a silk painting. As I’ve been working on this image of willows, going back and forth between reflection and reality, water and sky, it occurs to me that ambiguity itself is beauty.

The-Willows-Transfer-Print
The Willows, © Iskra Johnson

 

Filed Under: Greenlake, Recent Posts, Transfer Prints Tagged With: Art inspired by Greenlake, contemplative art, Contemporary artists influenced by Asian art, meditative art, print of a willow, the asian screen in printmaking, water print

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