Print

Brooklyn in the Snow: Week 14, Saturday

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Here’s another Wengenroth print I’ve been saving to share on the right occasion, not knowing exactly what the right occasion would be. It’s another snow scene, so I wanted to share it on a snowy day. Check! But even better…it’s the Brooklyn Bridge in the snow….and we happen to be staying in Brooklyn, just 2 miles from the Brooklyn Bridge. Check check!

Wengenroth was born and raised in Brooklyn. Different sources have given me different stories for where he lived his adult life. One version said he lived in Brooklyn till a few years before he died.

The print is a fairly close view of a man bundled up for the weather , walking head down across the bridge. Because this is a closer view than most of his pictures, his attention to detail in textures is even more apparent. Look at the bridge cables, especially the one in the right foreground. Look at the snow on the bridge cables and on the gas streetlamp, and of course the bricks of the bridge arches. Look at the textured rather than individual bridge suspension cables on right and left in the background of the print. I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do!

Brooklyn Bridge in Winter (Lithograph, 1959)

Dramatic weather from a Prairie Print Maker: Thursday

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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)

Satisfyingly sinister: Wednesday

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We’ve looked at a print of NYC printmaker Karen Whitman’s once before. Her medium is primarily relief block prints. Today’s print is a vaguely sinister atmospheric linocut with a pleasing texture, evoking a mild sense of creepiness. The creepiness calls to mind both Charles Addams and Edward Gorey. Satisfyingly sinister, you might say.

Bay Window (Linocut, undated)

Charming parody/satire: Tuesday

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You may remember several posts about Grandville, a French artist of the early nineteenth century, who published several collections of caricatures satirizing the bourgeoisie. These were lithographs printed in black and white, and hand colored after printing, from a collection called Les Metamorphoses du Jour (The Transformations of the Day). Some of them require some context, or the availability of the text, and better French than I possess, but some are interpretable off the bat. Today’s is pretty straightforward and very cute/fun.

I assume the choice of the animal head for the teacher was very deliberate and a very broad joke. Enjoy!

Les metamorphoses du jour (Lithograph, hand colored, 1829)

A little Manhattan nostalgia: Monday

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I dug into the oeuvre of a new-to-me etcher this weekend. Susan Pyzow is a native New Yorker, and many of her prints are set in NYC. She does a level of detail similar to Wengenroth, but with a very different texture, which is pleasing by virtue of it’s difference and intrinsically. I selected today’s print because the subject is a place somewhat familiar to me–the Jefferson Market area, around 6th Av and W 10th Street. My grandmother lived on W. 11th Street between 5th and 6th Av, and she did much of her shopping at the Jefferson Market, a somewhat “gourmet” grocery store which was a neighborhood landmark for decades. The immediate area took on the Jefferson Market name, and a branch of the NY Public Library at 6th and 10th was called the Jefferson Market branch of the library. It was itself a historic building–a former courthouse with a very distinctive and beautiful appearance. Pyzow has a nice print of the north end of the library as seen (I think) from W 10th St. It evokes that area and that era for me–visiting my grandmother and being given luscious desserts, and walking around that portion of Greenwich Village.

Jefferson Market (Etching, 2017)

The beauty of bare trees in winter: Sunday

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We tend to think of the beauty of trees as being bound up with their leaves, especially the gorgeous colors of autumn. We’re now in the season of bare branches, which have their own beauty.

“Ages may have passed before man gained sufficient mental stature to pay admiring tribute to the tree standing in all the glory of its full leafage, shimmering in the sunlight, making its myriad bows to the restless winds; but eons must have lapsed before the human eye grew keen enough and the human soul large enough to give sympathetic comprehension to the beauty of bare branches laced across changing skies, which is the tree-lover’s full heritage.
In winter, we are prone to regard our trees as cold, bare, and dreary; and we bid them wait until they are again clothed in verdure before we may accord to them comradeship. However, it is during this winter resting time that the tree stands revealed to the uttermost, ready to give its most intimate confidences to those who love it. It is indeed a superficial acquaintance that depends upon the garb worn for half the year; and to those who know them, the trees display even more individuality in the winter than in the summer. The summer is the tree’s period of reticence, when, behind its mysterious veil of green, it is so busy with its own life processes that it has no time for confidences, and may only now and then fling us a friendly greeting.”
Trees At Leisure, Amanda Botsford Comstock, 1916

Today I share two prints created 60 years apart, emphasizing the beauty of bare branched trees in winter.

1991-V, Grietje Postma (Color reduction woodcut, 1991) and Winter Moon at Toyomogahara, Kawase Hasui (Woodcut, 1931)

“Faces of my people”–another profound poetry/print convergence: Saturday

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I have found a number of beautiful instances in which poetry has inspired visual art or vice versa, and these definitely include some of the more profound pieces I love. Today’s is a poem by Margaret Taylor Burroughs, whose prints we’ve looked at a couple of times before. You may remember her as an activist/artist/advocate, a poet as well as practitioner of several visual art media. Of those, printmaking is the one for which she is best known.

One of Burroughs’ most famous ( and in my humble opinion, most profound) poems is titled “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black? (Reflections of an African-American Mother)” published in 1963. Here is the first stanza and a little of the second, just to give you a sense of it. (Full text here.)

“What shall I tell my children who are black
Of what it means to be a captive in this dark skin
What shall I tell my dear one, fruit of my womb,
Of how beautiful they are when everywhere they turn
They are faced with abhorrence of everything that is black.
Villains are black with black hearts.
A black cow gives no milk. A black hen lays no eggs.
Bad news comes bordered in black, black is evil
And evil is black and devils’ food is black…

What shall I tell my dear ones raised in a white world
A place where white has been made to represent
All that is good and pure and fine and decent….”

This was apparently published in book form with some of her own prints as illustrations. I have been searching but have not yet been able to find a copy quickly and easily. (The Interlibrary Loan request is pending. Even that is pretty amazing in terms of ease, but I’m spoiled by ebooks and buying on Bookfinder.com).

I found an online article that pairs a couple of Burroughs’ prints with the book/poem. Even though the dates mean these can’t possibly be illustrations in the book, they do connect to the poem, so I will share them here today.

Here’s hoping that 2022 is better for people of color and how people treat each other than has been the case (especially 2016-2021).

Person (Two Worlds) (Linocut, 2002) and Faces of My People (Linocut, 2003)

Evening in Gloucester Harbor: week 12, day 7 (Friday)

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As always, the stellar lithographer Stow Wengenroth brings happiness to my heart. This is one of my favorite prints of his, which I’ve been saving, and I think New Year’s Eve and the end of my 12th week of sharing a print a day is a fitting occasion to share this one.

If you’re curious about how Gloucester Harbor sits in relation to the rest of Cape Ann and the mainland, here’s a nice detailed map (from the late 19th century).

This one is pretty uncomplicated. Gorgeous pic, no back story that I was able to find (and nothing in the picture to suggest there should be.)

Gloucester Evening (Lithograph, 1976)

Wishes for the New Year from Hokusai: week 12, day 6 (Thursday)

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Hokusai created a series of 5 prints traditionally used as New Year’s decorations. Each contained symbols suggesting wishes or hopes for the New Year. These were all vertically oriented long pieces, suggesting they were mounted on silk scrolls and hung, in a manner usually intended for ink brush paintings. One commentator on today’s print even suggests the tree branches covered in snow were created to suggest brush strokes rather than the clean lines characteristic of these woodblock prints.

Today’s print shows cranes in a snow-covered pine tree. Both cranes and pine are traditional symbols of longevity–a typical wish for the new year. This print of Hokusai’s is fairly well-known-not nearly as famous as the Great Wave off Kanagawa, nor as well-known as the Thirty-sex Views of Mount Fuji, but still fairly widespread in its distribution.

Please accept today’s print as my wish for you to have a long, happy, healthy life, with the coming year as a harbinger of that.

Two Cranes on a Snow-covered Pine Tree (Woodcut, 1834)

Yes, it’s a real medieval castle…..Week 12, Day 5 (Wednesday)

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Stokesay Castle is one of the best preserved examples of a fortified manor house in all of England. It is located in Shropshire, between the Welsh border and Birmingham. It was built in the 13th century and the basic structure has remained largely unchanged since then. The site was originally part of the estate of various Norman nobles, but was sold to a wool merchant in the early 1300s. Ownership passed back and forth between noble and common families. During the 19th century, owners recognized the historic significance and attempted to conserve/restore, which was a considerable financial burden. In 1986, the family that owned Stokesay gave it to the English Heritage Trust, which manages numerous historic sites throughout England.

John Taylor Arms, well-known American etcher whom we’ve looked at before,. did this gorgeous print of it on one of his numerous European tours. Again, the level of detail is astounding and beautiful. Enjoy!

Stokesay Castle (Shropshire, etching, 1942)

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