"Lunch Break on the Piscataqua" by Shane Chick

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More artwork and handmade goods by the whole Chick family can be found at their Etsy Store, Chick Family Ink.

A heavy man with a heavy shadow looks out over the river. Drink in hand, he sits comfortably hunched-over among the rocks and mounds of grass-covered earth. Another person, a ways beside him still clutches a fishing pole, but this man, this one who dominates the center of the image, he is at rest. He stares out, lost in the moment of this very place without distracting thoughts. There is the natural beauty of looming clouds beyond the reassuring geometry of man-made structures in the distance. The man breaths softly in and out. This is where he is.

"Talelayu Opitlu (Talelayu With Owl)" by Kenojuak Ashevak

So far on this blog I have written about prints made by carving a block of wood, with the occasional linocut or wood engraving because those types of relief printmaking have traditionally been grouped together under the label of "woodcuts". However, in this post I'm writing about a technique of relief printmaking I had previously not encountered. Kenojuak Ashevak's relief prints are made from stone. This Inuit artist passed away in January of this year after decades of prolific art-making that included not only stonecut prints, but drawings, paintings, etchings, and even stained glass. The New York Times ran a thorough article about her life and career.

Kenojuak Ashevak is known best for her images of birds, especially owls. I am firmly convinced that much of people's fascination with owls is that with their frontal facing eyes (evolved for zeroing in on potential prey) make them seem more human. Here, an owl is portrayed alongside the mythological figure Talelayu. In Inuit mythology, Talelayu is a goddess who rules over the sea and creatures who live there. And so I am quizzocally drawn to this image. Why is an animal of the sky paired with a goddess of the sea? The owl's overgrown ears arch over stems of seaweed that wiggle like flames, while Talelayu's headdress reads like a blooming flower. Land and sea have come together and harmoniously stare out at us viewers. What are they thinking, so serene in their odd juxtaposition? What should we take from this meeting?

Owl and Cat in Love (Image 2)

"Cat Hunting A Rabbit"
Woodcut (reduction)
11.25" x 11.75" (image)
15" x 16" (paper)
Oil based inks on Subi paper
Limited edition of 5

Now that the Cats A-Z book is finished I have resumed work on Owl and Cat in Love, my purely visual re-telling of Edward Lear's poem "The Owl and the Pussycat". 

Here we have page 2! The brown color for the rabbit and cat are brighter and more orange than I did for page 1 because I thought that first print was a bit darker than I wanted. One decision I might make for the final book version is to use the brighter brown for the rabbit in the foreground, and the darker brown for the owl/cat that are swooping/pouncing on their prey.

Thankfully we live in this wonderful digital age where I can modify the colors however I like after the fact. This gives me the flexibility to experiment more as I make each woodcut. If I find certain color combinations work better, I can go back and digitally make the changes to any previous images so that they all fit together in the finished book. Apparently this is becoming the norm for a lot of artists of my generation. The Japanese have a word which refers to change, but that also translates to "the sadness of things." But here we see that sometimes change is wonderful!

"A Blue Monster Under Moon" by Ayu Tomikawa

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More about Ayu Tomikawa and her art can be found at her Etsy Store.

The monster sleeps in teal over a rubbery glob. He is better lit than could be considered safe. Above him floats an ominous, yellow moon, which appears more like a celestial cat's eye. It is as if some inky-black, nocturnal predator has caught sight of easy pickings, and in the stillness and quiet of the night is taking her time.  Even monsters are vulnerable when they sleep.

Preview Drawing for "Owl and Cat in Love"

I'm back to working on my Owl and Cat in Love book, which will be a re-telling of Leer's poem The Owl and the Pussycat as a wordless picture book. My version has a unique title partially because I'm taking many liberties with the story. Really just using Leer's poem as a jumping off point. One major change is that the cat isn't a pussycat at all. She's a Margay. I wanted to use a wild animal that hunts prey similar to a Great Horned Owl because in my version they first meet while hunting the same rabbit. Margays were a favorite wild cat from my childhood, and because of their smaller size (I didn't want the owl to have a girlfriend too much larger than him) and gorgeous coat I decided to make my Cat a Margay.

These two drawings are done right on the blocks I'm about to start carving. I did them in pencil first and then went over in Sharpie. I normally do drawings on paper first and transfer, but for this set of prints I'm drawing right on the block and then doing four-color reductions. I took these photos and put them together to see how the  composition of this double-page spread would look. (I couldn't just look at the blocks together since the drawings are on either side of the same block.) This is the moment when Owl and Cat first meet, and the image is supposed to convey love at first sight. I think this gets that across, but I honestly can't really see my own work while I'm in the middle of the process. Hopefully in a week I'll be blogging about the final prints, and with the color and expressively-carved marked added those images will be much more powerful.

"Bathers Throwing Reeds" by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

The two men in showy postures seem to look back at me, while the two women standing still in the water look down. The women appear more isolated and absorbed in their banal activity, while the men are exhibitionists. I find myself wondering, because the figures are so abstract, if this difference in postures is why I assume the two in the background are women (the ones in the foreground are obviously men.) I conclude that my assumption about their sex is more based on the women's generous hips. I look longer, and I think, these colors are strange. What time of day could this possibly be? The sky is black, but the green ground and orange bodies seem lit by the sun. I'm excited by the other-worldliness of this roughly-carved-out, electric-lizard-green place. Why don't the women get involved in the performance? Maybe they are just too used to it.

"Dolphin" by D.S. Wade

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More about D.S. Wade's artwork in a variety of traditional media can be found on her website.

This is one of those images that is so luscious and expressive that I can forget it is a woodcut and see it as an expressionist painting. I see splashes like fireworks, waves like folds in a great sheet, and the muscular form of the dolphin leaping seamlessly through air and water. White and coral-colored scratches tango with fluid sweeps of movement across the picture plane. If I look too long, I feel I cannot breath and must come up for air.