The two woodcut prints in this exhibition, People Helping People, and Sing-Praise God-Dance! tell the stories of people in action, doing honorable things.

    My primary medium is woodcut printmaking. It carries with it the tactile experience of carving wood, and the fascination of mixing and applying ink to that carving, and producing a vigorous printed image. The resistance of the wood, the wood grain, the feeling of carving the wood, and the uniqueness and sharpness of the carving tools, all work together to influence the final image. Woodcut can be stark, enabling the artist to produce an image that is severe, with high contrast and sharp edges. It also affords the possibility to push beyond the starkness, to articulate the details. From a distance, these details produce a mid-tone gray, knitting together the black and white shapes, and producing an overall unity. The details further bring to life the personalities of the people, natural objects, and man-made objects in the picture.

    As in other media, the principles of composition, contrast, draftsmanship, and mark-making apply. So in the black-and-white People Helping People woodcut, we see the drama activated by the composition, directing the eye through the print, exploring the activity. The viewers then tend to linger, and see the story unfold, as the shapes of the details come into focus. The intent is to bring out the activity in the story with the bending, lifting, turning of the people, and the particularity of the shapes of the cars, truck, building and boxes.

    In Sing-Praise God-Dance, we see the crispness of the black ink bringing out the personalities of the singer-dancers. But there is color and softness in the foreground and background which establish an environment where the singer-dancers are located. And that foreground and background has elements of nature present, but also hints of an other-worldly presence. Woodcut affords an amazing range of possibilities; a journey worth taking!