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You are here: Home / Archives for Greenlake

Northwest Mystic Summer

July 21, 2019 by Iskra Leave a Comment

Lummi Blues, archival pigment print by Iskra
Lummi Blues, archival pigment print by Iskra

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste.

It’s what everything else isn’t.

–Theodore  Roethke

Greetings from the Pacific Northwest summer, which arrived a few hours ago, sneaking in with a sun hat and a good book while the rest of the country fries in humid torment. A bit late, but divine. It’s hard to stay in the studio when the garden calls, begging me to count the lily pads and swoon in the golden light of the locust tree.

Yet, here I am, indoors, attempting to translate the outdoors after recent travels in landscape. The new work for SAM Gallery’s November show “Artists Influenced by Asia,” is directly influenced by the immediacy of nature here along the Salish Sea. A few weeks ago I went up to Samish Island with two dear friends, painters Chris Gedye and Patty Haller to see Patty’s new studio. It was complete bliss. We woke up in the morning to low tide’s iridescence, herons perched sentinel along the sand and wind stirring the branches of trees along the bluff. Off to the west was an island I’ve never seen from this perspective: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Digital Collage, Greenlake, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Watercolors Tagged With: Fishtown, Iskra Work in Progress, Lummi Island art, Northwest Mystic School, Roethke quote slowness, SAM Gallery, Samish island art, Skagit Valley art

Mood Indigo: Under the Influence

April 13, 2016 by Iskra 1 Comment

Kimono-SAAM

Last Friday I attended the opening of Mood Indigo at Seattle Asian Art Museum. It was a beautiful spring evening, the sky luminous over the park, and inside the refined Art Deco building everything shimmered in pale shafts of daylight and the flicker of blue votives. The museum’s refined and stately ambiance makes any event an occasion, although curator talks can sometimes plunge me into deep states of cultural narcolepsy. Not this time! To hear curator Pam McClusky speak is to go to Burning Man without leaving your chair. As she told the story of Indigo she took us on a riveting journey through ancient civilizations and exotic lands, weaving history, myth, poetry and metaphor into a dazzling tapestry. In this exhibit her wit and insight is evident throughout, and every caption is worth a study. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Digital Collage, Greenlake, Iskra Shows, Upcoming and Past, Recent Posts Tagged With: art and politics, Buddhis art, heron, mood indigo, printmaking, REbecca Solnit, Seattle Asian Art Museum, water image

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

The Lake, Late Autumn

November 13, 2011 by Iskra Leave a Comment

TheLakeLateAutumn
The Lake, Late Autumn, © Iskra Johnson

 

Filed Under: Greenlake, Recent Posts Tagged With: Art about Greenlake, art about water, mallard duck print

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