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Cleveland artist Mabel Hewit, whose work is the subject of a delightful summer/fall exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Born in Conneaut in 1903 and raised in Youngstown, Hewit, who died in 1984, spent the last 50 years of her life in Cleveland and Parma, where she produced dozens of colorful prints redolent of small-town and city life during the Great Depression and the decades that followed.

Hewit learned from West Virginia native Blanche Lazzell, a leading practitioner of white-line woodcut technique, who gave instruction in her studio in Provincetown, Mass., during the 1930s. The exhibition's catalog, which presents original research by Jane Glaubinger, the show's organizer and curator of prints, states that Hewit must have studied with Lazzell in 1929, when she visited Cape Cod to attend a class in outdoor painting sponsored by Teachers College, or in the summer of 1933. Judging from a 1934 color woodcut, in which Hewit closely emulated a similar work by Lazzell, the latter's influence was profound and lasting.

For the complete article see: http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2010/07/hewit.html

More images below......

"Mowing", color woodcut, (11" X 9.5") 

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Let's have an update on the progress of the colour block carving. Here are shots of the sides completed so far (these are clickable), along with a bit of explanation about what is happening.

First is the key block, with the Hasui image visible on the right half. The key for image #6 will later be cut onto the blank left side:

The next photos are five sides of three pieces of wood (I'm still not quite finished the sixth side). These are the colour zones for the Hasui image. They are cut onto the blocks in 'heads and tails' fashion, with registration marks at both ends of each face.

I ran a second edition of four sheets from the sixteen blocks used in Grass 2.  I was curious to see the effect of transitioning from pale greens into blues into blacks (rather than the simple blues into blacks of the first edition).  Also, I’d run into registration problems which affected five of the eight sheets I printed in the first edition — I thought I understood how that had occurred and wanted a test to be certain.  The solution worked very well and was quite simple — use a baren to lightly fix each sheet to the block prior to impressing with the rollers.

The prints are very similar, but they feel different…  The blue ones are a bit ‘crisper’ somehow and moodier.  The green ones have a more liquid feel and seem a little less brooding.  Both editions are quite good, I think — no matter where one looks, it’s interesting.  I read a lovely book last week — and was struck by this passage:

“…a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.“

From “The thousand autumns of Jacob De Zoet”
by David Mitchell (Random House, 2010)

Grass 2.2, July 23, 2010, 22.5 x 72 inches, woodcut from 16 cherry plywood blocks on hosho paper by Iwano Ichibei, edition of 4

detail -- registration check lower right

[Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]