IskraFineArt

Iskra Fine Art

Welcome to a gallery of my fine art.  The galleries on the right contain series of works. The posts below feature individual pieces or the introductory statements for the galleries as well as occasional essays. Most artwork is available for exhibition or purchase, either as originals or in some cases as prints.  Please call or email me for details.  Phone: 206.367.2643  Email: iskra at iskradesign.com.  All images © Iskra Johnson and may be reproduced only with the permission of the artist.

The Stick To Leaf Conversion

I thought the privets were all dead. Completely. It wasn't the long snows of December, but the cold followed by the slight warming followed by two more snows into mid April that seemed to push a normally even tempered species over the edge. As with romance, it is not the lover who leaves quickly and without ceremony who does the greatest damage but the one who says yes no maybe but then again hmmm who can leave you exhausted and unable to resurrect your heart.

I had planned grudgingly to replace them all.  (The privets, that is.) So I was stunned yesterday to find the gray and scabrous branches draped in filigree, hugged by dozens of amorous new leaves. It seemed no less a miracle than if the gray planked fence itself came to life. I could feel a Girl Scout lecture coming, something about fortitude, resolve, endurance. And it was all true. Adversity does breed character, or at least a lot more leaves and a stronger root system. April's gray snows have been replaced with a carpet of jade and the exultant swords of dandelions. The malingering dogwood rudely transplanted five years ago has pink castanets among its leaves for the first time. The windmill palms which I thought would break under ice now wear long chains of golden seeds, and the vines I planted at their roots have leapt six feet and bloomed large and purple.

Why not be patient? And be surprised? The delphinium took four months last year to grow one foot, and then bloomed twice, once in November. I can humble myself to lessons from the dirt. Unlike Democritus of Abdera, who in 1621 put out his own eyes "the better to see" I am not overwhelmed either by the Anatomy of Melancholy or the relentless optimism of flowers. There is so much food here. Even as I feast my eyes the ants feast on the peony buds, and the bees drink from the geranium. One layer of impressions layers over the next, dappled light and hot light and slanted mornings and afternoons and I know there is something gathering.

 

 

Joy (Her Shoe)

I have always love wooden shoe lasts, and this one seemed particularly lovely given that it apparently fits the foot of Joy, size triple AAA 7 1/2. Offset paper lithography hand printed.

Boy On A Wire

Perhaps this piece was affected by the fact that I played Leonard Cohen in the studio for about three months straight. I was fortunate to go to his once-in-a-lifetime concert last month, and it exceeded all memory and expectation. I'm interested here in the idea of freedom, the real and unreal and the precipitous edge between. Offset paper lithography using reproductions of wood cuts from the 1700's, hand-printed over pastel and watercolor.

Just Before the Ides of March

The moon keeps appearing in surprising places.  I’ve seen it pre-dawn in the east trapped in branches strung with dew.  Last night it seemed to rise in the West.  And I haven’t seen it overhead in a long while.  If it fell into my pocket would I even recognize it among the dimes and five-cent buffalos? I went to school, for awhile, I read the books and took the tests and traced the oval diagrams. How can it be that I have lost touch and cannot tell you if the moon moves in the same or different direction from the sun? The sky has held winter for so long I seem to look up only at the edges of the day, and so I forget: I don’t know who is rotating around whom. A long time ago they established that one of us is standing still, and one is spinning, and we all learned a lesson in humility. Surely if the orbits changed they would tell me, and the world would be in tears.

In this version the woman reads no books. She wades in the water, she has many minds shaped like the moon, and at the edges of the desert, tulips bloom.

Ode to Winter

Several days past Valentines' the last vestiges of snow have only just melted. The yard is a desolation of toppled grasses, black and sorrowful Hebes, and forlorn conceits like the warm weather Acacia, now a mere stick.  I post these images above to remember how beautiful it was for four hours when the sun came out during the snow siege of December 2009. I took a walk with my camera and boarded a sleigh to fairyland.

Now I must confront the ruins. The gargoyle's smokey powers were no match for the long freeze, which destroyed the liner for the pond. The pond must be rebuilt from scratch or filled in-- and I feel obligated to feed the heron his goldfish, so I'm going to take a deep breath and commit all over again to this garden, and making it the oasis it wants to be.  

Last month I dug up the last carrots underneath a snowdrift and made carrot bean soup. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder in her little house in the big woods. Carrots really came through, as did my beloved baby pak choy.  So this summer I will plant more and harvest more, and take inspiration from the effervescent tendrils that twine from sugar snap peas, and the sun-baked scents of old fashioned rosa rugosa and lemonleaf geranium.  Farewell tropical wonders, Acacias, flax, I'll be looking for hardy natives that will last the fiercest ice age and burn with color in winter. 

And now I'm going to oil my pruning shears, put on my boots, and test the tentative warmth of February.

What Does Heaven Look Like

On November 13, 2005 I opened the newspaper to a striking and disturbing photograph of an Iraqi woman suicide bomber. Her bomb had failed to go off and she was captured unharmed.  Her husband succeeded in his mission, blowing up an entire wedding party.  I kept this image on my bulletin board and thought about it for two years, wondering what goes on in the mind of someone who thinks they are going to heaven in the moment of immolation.  This image sequence imagines this moment, from within and without.  You can see the series by clicking on "What Does Heaven Look Like" in the gallery on the left.

This mixed media piece and another of my politically themed pieces can be seen as part of the national ART OF DEMOCRACY network of  exhibits. The show, "Up Against the Two Wall", opened with an artist reception October 3rd from 6-9 PM at the Two Wall Gallery on Vashon Island, 17600 Vashon Highway South. 

The exhibit included local Northwest and some from as far away as Ohio and Minnesota:

Beverly Naidus, Swaneagle, Norma Fried, Selene Vasquez, Greg Hartman, Bob Tomolillo, Todd Thyberg, Rick Tuel, Patti Bowman, Scott Nichols, Ben Meeker, Den Hanmer, Emily Gunter, Ildiko' Kalapa'cs, Betty Gardner, Neil Brooks, Sarah Dillon,  Kristin Morris, Erin Hoffman, Laurel Leuders, Mary Pekarek, Tom Gross Shader, Greg Wessel.