Print

Week 3, Day 1 of share-a-print-each-day: Stow Wengenroth again

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Yesterday I broke one of the few rules I set myself. I chose a print that visually I didn’t love. It’s meaningful, the concept excited me because of Frasconi’s Art in service of Justice bent, and the (probably intentional) convergence of the Kent State and Melville poem things. My intention was only to post prints that were visually exciting, that grabbed me viscerally, whether with pleasure or other feelings. The Frasconi thing grabbed my brain, not my gut. Sorry about that. (There are some Frasconi prints I find gut-grabbing, and I’ll probably come back with one of those at some point in the future.)

To make up for that, I’m going to share another Stow Wengenroth print. You may remember him as the lithographer who does mostly New England scenes that are gorgeous and so detailed. It’s so difficult to choose because I have yet to find a print of his that I don’t love. After much deliberation, I chose “Along the Canal”. So evocative! Just looking at the picture make me feel like it’s spring.

[I think this is the Blynman Canal in Gloucester, MA, connecting Gloucester Harbor to the Anisquam River, allowing passage from the eastern shore of Cape Ann to the western without going all the way around]

Week 2, Thursday: Samella Lewis.

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Samella Sanders Lewis (born 1924) is an incredible figure. She started at Dillard and then moved to Hampton Institute, earning her bachelor’s degree. She continued her education at OSU, earning a masters and then her PhD in art history and cultural anthropology in 1951 (first African American woman to do so). She became the first Chair of the Fine Arts Department at Florida A&M University. Lewis has taught at a number of colleges and universities, and is currently on the faculty of Scripps College, which is part of the Claremont consortium in California. She founded and served as first curator of the Museum of African American Art in LA. She is a renowned artist, best known for her prints (lithographs, screen prints, woodcuts and linocuts), but also a painter.

Today’s print has tested my art history detective skills and found them sorely lacking. I find online images dated 1968, 1969, and 2006, and it is described variously as a woodcut or a linocut. My attempted reconstruction/hypothesis is that the original block was cut in the late 60s (’68 or ’69) and was a linocut, and that she redid it as a woodcut in 2006. Why? Perhaps the original block was lost, and there was demand for more impressions? My limited Internet skills were unable to go further than this. I am so curious to learn more.

When I closely examine different images found online with different dates in the captions (as well as handwritten on the print itself by the artist), I find small variations. (It feels like those children’s games–“circle 10 differences between these two pictures.”) These could be related to wear on a single original block, reprinted after a lapse of many years; or to variations in inking; or as I hypothesize above, to creation of a new block attempting to reproduce the old.

The print itself? The recorded title is either Prophet or Modern Day Prophet. I have not been able to find specific history or commentary on this piece. I look at that face and see sadness, experience, perhaps wisdom. It again amazes me how evocative a combination of black lines and white background can be. What do you see?

Wednesday, week 2, share-a-print-a-day: Gyotaku.

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Today is for whimsy, not just one print, but an interesting printing technique.
Gyotaku. Japanese fish printing! You take a real fish, brush it with ink or paint, press rice paper against it, and then peel it off. Sounds simple, but I imagine it’s a good deal harder to do than it sounds. It was apparently invented in the latter half of the nineteenth century and originally used by Japanese fishermen to document their catches. (Maybe better than taxidermy?)

Here are a couple of examples from a teacher’s blog.

You can do this with any kind of fish–squid, octopus, etc. I’ve seen beautiful examples with tortoises, and finally, shells. The shell print below and several others are available on Etsy, in a shop called iGyotaku.

Week 2, day 4: Contemporary etcher with a flavor similar to the “classic prints”

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Tuesday’s print: As you may have gathered already, the black and white “classic prints” (etchings, engravings, lithographs, by artists such as Martin Lewis and Stow Wengenroth) are my favorites. Recently, I discovered a contemporary etcher named DeAnn Prosia, whose richly textured prints have a very similar feel to Wengenroth’s. She is a New Yorker, and many of her etchings portray quintessential New York scenes–very similar to Martin Lewis, but set in the now (instead of Lewis’s work which was largely portraying his time–1910s to 1960s).

This piece is called Under the Elevated. There are numerous places in Manhattan and the 3 boroughs on the subway, where scenes like this could be found. I look at this print and it makes me remember what it feels like to live in the city. I lived in Astoria at the end of the R subway line, which was elevated there, and the neighborhood there felt similar to this.

Week 2, day 3 of share-a-print-a-day: contemporary and funky

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Monday’s print: I originally was taken with “classic” prints–largely black and white etchings and engravings, some lithographs. I find many contemporary color prints overwhelming, plus they obscure the detailed textures that I love most in the “classic” prints. My dear friend Ruth Super introduced me to a contemporary British printmaker named Andy Lovell, who works in color. At first, I was put off by the color prints, but as I have continued to look at them periodically, I have grown to really appreciate and enjoy some of them. My favorite so far is this lovely lighthouse scene. I am not sure of the technique used for these prints–I think they are screenprints but haven’t been able to find that info about specific prints.

Here is the URL of his website where you can see more and purchase prints. Much as I enjoy them, the prices are a bit more than I am prepared to spend, but you may feel differently. https://andylovell.co.uk/

Contemporary printmaker portrays the pandemic

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Share-a-print-a-day, week 2: another contemporary artist, Vincent de Boer, from Germany; this one young and not long embarked on his career. (Not to be confused with a contemporary Dutch “musical artist” of the same name. Took me a minute to realize they were two separate people, not one multi-talented person.) He’s very good, and shows a lot of his work on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/winston_artist/) as well as selling some prints on Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/WinstonArtist?ref=shop_sugg). So far, all of his prints that I know of are linocuts (printed from relief blocks carved from a sheet of linoleum mounted on a wooden block) I actually bought an original impression of the print I am featuring today (and will likely buy more of his work in the future). When I saw it, it spoke to me. I knew immediately that it was a reaction to the pandemic lockdown, titled “Isolation”.

Week 2 of share-a-print-a-day: Martin Lewis

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To round out my first week of share-a-print-each-day, I’m returning to the artist that started it all for me, Martin Lewis (1881-1962). Lewis was born in Australia, but emigrated to the US in his teens and settled here, finding various ways to support himself with his artistic talents until eventually succeeding financially as a serious artist in the heyday of print art in the US. Lewis was an ardent printmaker, experimenting with numerous different intaglio techniques including many variations on both engraving and etching. Today’s print was produced by drypoint, an engraving technique that allows very fine lines and detail at the expense of producing a plate that degrades after a fairly small number of prints. Drypoint plates rarely produce more than 25 or so high-quality impressions, often less, and there are often noticeable differences even a few impressions apart. Since it’s Saturday morning, I’m sharing a lovely morning scene in Manhattan titled Quarter to Nine, Saturday’s Children, illustrating people going to work on E. 34th St at Park Avenue on a Saturday morning. The title is derived from the nursery rhyme “Monday’s child is fair of face….” in which “Saturday’s child works hard for a living”.

Day 7: John Biggers. Representation matters.

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Friday’s print: Representation matters. I’ve been looking at prints by a number of African-American artists. Some prints aim to illustrate the black experience in America, whereas others seem to be simply about representation. I’ve not been able to learn much about the history of today’s print by John Biggers (1924-2001, a fascinating figure), but it’s a lovely picture. It may simply have been a portrayal of a moment, or it may have been intending to present a picture of a child of color, to contribute to children not thinking of light skin as “normal” or the default. In any case, it’s a charming and beautiful work of art.

Day 6: Grandville, satire on the bourgeoisie

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Thursday’s print: In early 1800s France, Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard (who used the pseudonym Grandville) made fun of the bourgeoisie in a book collection of lithograph caricatures (Les metamorphoses du jour) portraying everyday scenes with anthropomorphized animals. I don’t have the detailed knowledge of the period nor enough French to understand many of the scenes, but they are beautifully done, and many are charming and funny even without fully understanding the context. These lithographs were printed in black and white, and then colored by hand afterwards. When the first edition sold out, the caricatures were copied into woodblocks for reprinting, and again hand-colored afterwards.

Day 5: Stow Wengenroth, New England Lithographs

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Wednesday’s print: Stow Wengenroth (1906-1978) was a prolific lithographer whom Andrew Wyeth once called “America’s greatest living artist working in black and white”. The bulk of his lithographs were New England scenes, including landscapes and seascapes. (Sue Fendrick he lived in Rockport!) He also did a number of New York City scenes. He achieved incredible detail and texture in his prints, all with lines of black and intervening spaces of white. As with Koitsu (yesterday’s artist), I love so many of his prints that I had a very difficult time choosing just one for today, and as with Koitsu, I will likely come back to Wengenroth again. This is called Flat Rock Cove. The texture of the rocks just knocks me over. Some of his prints are so detailed that at first glance they look like photographs, but when you look again, you can see the texture that distinguishes a print from a photo.

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