Looking at prints is dangerous. It’s down the rabbit hole every time. Today while looking at many prints by an artist I was already familiar with, I lucked into a particularly dramatic print by an unfamiliar printmaker. Herschel Logan was a charter member of the Prairie Print Makers, founded in 1930 and based in Wichita, Kansas. This was the heyday of printmaking, and there were numerous printmaker organizations, local, regional and national. The Prairie Print Makers distinguished themselves from others by working in many different print media, as opposed to many other groups which were built up around one technique. (This group included among its more prestigious members none other than Stow Wengenroth, of Brooklyn and New England!) Most of Logan’s prints are lovely but pretty conventional–some bit of rustic outdoor scenery with a house or barn or some such. Today’s print is about as far from the serene and rustic countryside as you can get. Behold….
Tornado (Woodcut, 1937-38)
