Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Relief Prints from the Community Arts Center (Part 2 of 2)

This is the continuation of this post about The Printmakers of The CAC in the Stairwell Gallery of the Community Arts Center in Wallingford, PA. 

Both of these color woodcuts are by Lisa Burder Lentz. The titles, from top to bottom, are Bermuda, and Trucks. There is a third lovely woodcut by Lentz in the exhibition, but the glare on the photo I took was so bad I didn't include it in this post. 


Bermuda feels rather ghostly to me, and I find this due mostly to the color choices - a sort of muted grey that weighs down the ship and dock and turns the water to concrete, and salmon in the sky that is reminiscent of sunset, but a little more opaque. While palm trees and cruise ships are often associated with exotic intrigue and sunny, colorful vacation spots, this image is distant and eerie. I feel it's a far off memory, and of a place to which one cannot return. 

In Trucks I first feel a strong breeze blow across the picture plane, in contrast to the solid blocks of trucks, that though they have wheels, are set as firmly in the landscape as boulders. The woodgrain and sometimes jaggedly-carved, sometimes delicately-carved lines bring the entire setting alive with movement. Leaves and grasses quiver, murky clouds float, and a river or creek moves at a steady pace, carrying with it the reflections of the still and silent crates. 





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