Black and White

Queen Anne's Lace

2012-01-27T09:17:00.000-05:00

Queen Anne's lace is the wild carrot, introduced to America from Europe. The froth of tiny white flowers looks like lace, and the single dark flower in the middle is said to represent a drop of blood where the queen pricked herself with her needle. The funny thing is, though, it isn't called Queen Anne's lace any place there ever was a Queen Anne. In the UK its common name is apparently "bishop's lace." But Queen Anne's lace is a much better name, for two obvious reasons. First, anything named after "Anne" has to be good. (Okay, there may be a slight bias there.) But secondly, anything with a name that begins with Q is invaluable to those of us with a love of alphabetics. I have yet to see a botanical alphabet with Q represented by anything else but Queen Anne's lace. (Hmm.. I guess you could use quince…)

I have here today three block prints of Queen Anne's lace, from three gardening alphabets. First up is the Q from Gerard Brender à Brandis's Wood Engraver's Alphabet. It shows his all-over, meticulously detailed style. But although his depiction is very detailed, it's not laid out at all like a botanical print but instead seems more like a close-up snapshot in a field, or else a design for fabric. Queen Anne's lace, with its tiny white lines, is a natural for carving into a black background as Brender à Brandis has done here.

The second Q comes from Mary Azarian's Gardener's Alphabet. Azarian paints her wood block prints in this book with watercolor, making them perhaps less dramatic, but brighter and more cheerful. Azarian's version is no botanical drawing either, since she's shown not only the plant but a whole scene of people picking and enjoying the flowers. Although this piece mostly uses the more traditional black lines on white, the thick field of plants and flowers is actually done by leaving the black background.

Finally, my version of Queen Anne's lace, made as the Q for my botanical alphabet poster. Unlike the other two, I've focussed on just one plant, but like them I left the black background around all the tiny white details. I made sure to include one of my favorite parts of the flower - not just the little flowerets, but the delicate, feathery spikes of the leaves and bracts.

[Pictures: Queen Anne's Lace, wood engraving by Gerard Brender à Brandis, from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008;

Queen Anne's Lace, wood block print with watercolor by Mary Azarian, from A Gardener's Alphabet, 2000;

Queen Anne's Lace, rubber block print by AEGN, 2007.]

Happy New Year of the Dragon!

2012-01-24T08:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, and this is now the Year of the Dragon. I shall, of course, celebrate with block prints of dragons! While you enjoy them, consider how the dragon is magnanimous, stately, vigorous, strong, self-assured, proud, noble, direct, dignified, eccentric, intellectual, fiery, passionate, decisive, pioneering, artistic, generous, and loyal, but also tactless, arrogant, imperious, tyrannical, demanding, intolerant, dogmatic, violent, impetuous, and brash. No wonder you need to be circumspect when dealing with dragons. And no wonder dragons never responded well to those medieval European knights charging in pell mell with their rude swords and accusations.
All the dragon wood block prints I have here are actually Japanese. You'll often hear that Japanese

dragons have three claws per foot, while Indonesian and Korean dragons have four, and Chinese dragons have five. Alternately, common dragons have four and only Imperial dragons get to sport five. In any case, count up the toes on these wood block prints, do the math, and make of it what you will. I have two nineteenth century depictions and a modern one. The second of these dragons, by Kuniyoshi, is interesting because the wood block print was clearly trying to reproduce the look of a brush painting. You can see how the ends of the lines are carved to look as though they're fading off like brush strokes. (Hajime, the artist who made this third dragon, is notable because according to one web site, he "began his artistic career as a sculpture." If so, he's done a great job of overcoming his stiffness - I thought his work was beautiful even by normal human standards!)

There's another excellent mythological creature associated with the Chinese New Year, and that's the Nian. Nians live under the ocean or up in the mountains and used to come out at the New Year to attack people, especially yummy juicy children. Luckily, despite its ferocity, it's afraid of loud noises and the color red, and now that people know to take these simple precautions, it hasn't been seen by humans for a long time. There are several versions of the Nian's ultimate fate. In one version it becomes the mount of a priest. In another version it's slain by the villagers who banded together against it. In another story it's defeated by a lion, and in yet another version it's the villagers in a lion costume who defeat the dreadful monster. That's why you get lion dances at New Year's festivities. (Some lion dancers once performed at P and T's school. Part of the dance included the lion kicking a cabbage (or was it an orange?) up into the air and then catching it in its mouth. To everyone's incredible delight, one of the cabbages (or oranges?) was kicked so high it flew straight into a big can light above
the stage and exploded it with sparks! Now that's a dance routine anyone can
appreciate.) So, what does the Nian look like? That's an excellent question. I sure wish I knew the answer. Maybe sort of like a Chinese lion with touches of unicorn and ox? I wasn't able to find any definitive traditional depictions.
In a cool linguistic note, however, "nian" is also the Chinese word for "year." So, Xin Nian Hao - Good New Year (and good new Nian) - to all!

[Pictures: Dragon, Japanese color wood block print, Chinese school, 19th century, (image from Wikimedia Commons);

Dragon and Waves, color wood block print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c. 1827-31 (image from the Smithsonian Institution);

Dragon 8, color wood block print with gold and silver, by Namiki Hajime, 2007 (image from this web site);

Nian, from an e-book - see this advertisement for details.]

T's Favorite Poem

2012-01-20T14:32:00.000-05:00

I can't remember exactly how it came up, but P and T have had a poetry unit recently in school and T said something or other to which the only appropriate response was to start reciting "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

I know the first several verses by heart, but after a while I declared that I wasn't doing the poem justice, and I fetched a book and started again, reading it aloud to T and P with all the melodrama and beauty it deserves.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,

With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!

Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,

When they shot him down on the highway,

Down like a dog on the highway,

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

"The Highwayman" (1906) is not the sort of poem that's fashionable these days. The story it tells is pure soap opera without any attempt at exploration of self or capturing what it is to be alive in our modern world. The language is over-the-top poetical, right down to Tim the Ostler's "hair like moldy hay," which cracks me up every time. If Noyes submitted this poem to a critic today he would be scorned and derided and held up as an example of the worst kind of amateur idiocy. He would certainly not be published, much less admired.

So let me tell you what happened when I finished my dramatic reading of this less than stellar poem. T immediately ran to get paper and pencil, settled herself on the loveseat beside me, and composed a poem of her own. Her poem was about 20 lines long, describing a fairy gathering in a dark woods. It borrowed the use of repetition from Noyes, as well as a certain flavor of moonlight and mystery. Over the next week or so T reread "The Highwayman" enough times to memorize the first verse and bits and pieces from other parts of the poem. All fired up, she had me print out several pages of poems for her, her favorites selected from the stack of anthologies I put in her eager hands.

In their school poetry units over the past few years, P and T have been regularly instructed not to make their poems rhyme. When they come home complaining, I explain to them that the teachers are just trying to make sure that their first priority is to pick the perfect word for the situation, instead of trying to jam in an irrelevant or inappropriate word simply because it happens to rhyme. But after trying to help justify the teachers' reasoning, I go on to sympathize with my children, because in my heart I know something about poetry that all the critics of the past fifty years or more seem to have missed. I'd be willing to bet (if I were a betting woman) that "The Highwayman," for all its melodrama, has created more poetry-lovers than all the deep, gritty, relevant, impenetrable words of today's "best" poems. Prose broken up into lines is not poetry, and perhaps it takes a child to prove that simple fact.

Of course I'm absolutely not saying that words have to rhyme to be poetry. What I am saying is that children - and perhaps adults, too - don't learn to love poetry by reading just any old words. The power of real poetry is that it grips us more deeply than the mere meanings of the words. The words of poetry are more than their sum. They are meaning and sound, rhythm and emotion and color and light, exploding pictures in the mind and unfurling blossoms in the heart. Poems pour into us in a purer form than prose, and it's all those poetic tools that make it possible: simile and metaphor, startling images, juxtapositions, repetition, alliteration, rhythm, and yes, rhyme. The best poems sound like they rhyme even when they don't, because the words move with such a cadence as they pour in. And the poems that sound just like prose? Well, do they make you grab a pencil and start writing your own visions? Do they cling to your imagination so that within days you have them by heart? Do they make you hungry for more poetry? That's what "The Highwayman" did for T.

[Pictures: Turpin clearing the Toll Gate, wood block print, anonymous, 1837;

Tom King, wood block print for a Victorian paper theatre.]

Eric Ravilious - Snow!

2012-01-17T10:47:00.000-05:00

We have snow here, for the first time this winter (not counting that crazy October snow, because that wasn't winter yet.) P and T were outside as soon as they got up this morning, trying to make snow horses before they had to head off to school. This has got to be the first winter I've ever experienced in which there was no snow until mid-January, so instead of being sick of snow already, as we normally would be by now, it's a fun winter novelty.

In honor of the snow, and of the fact that I refilled some bird feeders this morning after seeing T and P off on their booted and mittened way, I feature here today two pleasing little wood block prints by Eric Ravilious.

Ravilious (1903 - 1942) was mostly known for murals, watercolors, and designs for Wedgewood ceramics. Of his wood block prints one review of a 2010 show of his work said, "they are minor creation. They are essentially book-plate emblems, with at best an antiquarian charm. They are heavily blacked in, decorative, heraldic, cramped

and neat. The figures are wooden. The views are artificial. The subjects are either stiff or twee. Avoid them. It's the sort of thing people like to take classes in." Ouch. (Not just for Ravilious, but for those amateurs who dare to take classes in something best left to True Artistes who rate the Art World's approval!) Anyway, I'm not crazy about all of Ravilious's work that I found on-line, but I find these two particular prints delightful.

[Pictures: Snow, wood block print by Eric Ravilious, 1932;

Swallows, wood block print by Eric Ravilious, 1932.

Images from Modern British Gallery.]

Quotation from The Independent, 13 July, 2010.

Friday the Thirteenth

2012-01-13T11:14:00.001-05:00

Happy Friday the Thirteenth! We'll have three of them this year, the most possible in a calendar year. (Every calendar year must have at least one, and at most three Friday the Thirteenths.) 2012 is extra-special, though, in being a leap year with three Friday the Thirteenths, something that happens only once every 28 years. And that gives an extra fillip of fun to the phobic: our three Friday the Thirteenths are each exactly thirteen weeks apart.

But what's so special about Friday the Thirteenth anyway? Like most superstitions it's basically a fantasy, and as such it can be used to set the scene for a fantastical occurrence. George Orwell's 1984 famously begins with clocks striking thirteen, which of course is not fantasy when you use a 24 hour clock, but nevertheless taps into the superstition of unlucky thirteen to set the stage. When you do have a twelve-hour clock, the thirteenth strike heralds in not just mere unpleasantness, but actual magic, as in Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. The ill-omen of thirteen plays into the atmosphere of the Duke's dark castle in James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks, too. Friday the Thirteenth sets the magic for at least some versions of the body switch in Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers, but not surprisingly, the majority of fantasy based on Friday the Thirteenth is of the horror variety. (Ugh.)

Thirteen has had a long history of superstition in many cultures around the world. Two of the most common "reasons" are that in Norse mythology Loki was the thirteenth god to join the party at which he caused the death of Baldur, and in Christian lore Judas was the thirteenth disciple, who caused the death of Jesus. Really thirteen is probably seen as an imperfect number because it's one more than the nice mathematical roundness of twelve. But what about when the thirteenth day of the month falls on a Friday? What's that all about?

A study in 1907 asked 1,875 college students to list all the superstitions they knew of. Only two listed "If the 13th day of the month comes on a Friday, evil things are more likely to happen than at any other time." But in 1933 another study found that 95% of seniors at seven colleges believed that "Friday the 13th always brings bad luck." Something happened in between to popularize a new superstition.

In the nineteenth century you had unlucky 13 and you also had Friday as the unluckiest day of the week. When they came together it was extra unlucky, but only because two separate bad lucks were both in force, like if you were to drop a mirror onto a black cat or something. (Which is the perfect place to mention a silly bit of Friday the Thirteenth trivia. In 1939 the town board of French Lick, Indiana ordered that for the 24 hour period of Friday the 13th all black cats in town had to wear bells so that superstitious residents could more easily avoid them.) Before 1908 the date was always written with a comma, "Friday, the 13th," as in two separate bits of information. But in 1907 Thomas W. Lawson published a novel called Friday, the Thirteenth about stock traders who took advantage of superstition to crash the market. It wasn't just the now-forgotten book itself that popularized the idea, though. Lawson launched a huge and on-going marketing campaign in which he took out large ads in the New York Times pushing the superstition by way of pushing interest in his book. Apparently it worked. Now "Friday the Thirteenth" is considered one of the most common and well-known superstitions. (Except in Spanish-speaking countries, where it's Tuesday the Thirteenth you have to watch out for.)

Finally, you'll need to know what to call the fear of Friday the Thirteenth that you'll find in books and possibly real life. The first word is friggatriskaidekaphobia, named after Frigga, the Norse goddess after whom Friday is named. The rest of the word is the more commonly known triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number thirteen, which first appeared in a psychology text in 1910. (It's built from Greek roots, although it's the Greek for "three and ten" rather than the Greek for "thirteen.") Another word for fear of Friday the Thirteenth is paraskevidekatriaphobia, from the Greek roots "Friday," "thirteen," and, of course, "fear." Most sources say this word was coined by therapist Dr. Donald Dossey, but one source said it first appeared in 1911 and was first written in a mainstream source in 1953. I don't know when Dr Dossey was born, but as he's still alive and working I have my doubts that he was coining psychotherapy jargon a hundred years ago. Somebody must be wrong on this!

Anyway, instead of thinking of Friday the Thirteenth as an unlucky day, it would be a lot more fun to think of it as a magical day, and enjoy!

[Pictures: illustrations by Marc Simont, from The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber, Simon & Schuster, 1950;

Guardian Cat, linocut by Carol Wilhide, 1993.]

Anna Heyward Taylor

2012-01-10T20:07:00.001-05:00

Anna Heyward Taylor (1879-1956) was an artist known for her block prints and watercolors. She's particularly known for her work depicting landscape and culture of South Carolina, where she was born and lived for much of her life. She did, however, travel extensively, where she worked with artists who specialized in Japanese style woodcuts, and artists in Provincetown, Massachusetts, who were developing their own unique style of woodcuts. (There will be posts on each of these styles some day, no doubt.) So while Taylor is known as a regional artist, her work was certainly influenced by her broad artistic education.

One thing I find particularly pleasing about Taylor's work is the balance of black and white. In this image of Charleston in the distance, for example, the heavy blackness of the tree makes a nice frame, and the blackness of the tiny buildings contrasts perfectly with the whiteness of the intervening space.

In this one, Bennett's Rice Mill, I really enjoy the "carviness" of the lines. There's no lack of detail, but the piece looks distinctly carved. You can see the direction and depth of the blade. I really like that hand-crafted quality.

Taylor did a lot of pictures relating to the agriculture of South Carolina, from boll weevils to people working in the cotton fields. Bennet's Rice Mill is from one series of South Carolina subjects. (I'd like to include one with field workers, but I don't have enough space, so be sure to check out some of the other images at the Gibbes Museum of Art.) Anna Heyward Taylor also did pictures of South Carolina animals, a subject I can really relate to, since I keep coming back to my local animals as subjects.

I think Anna Heyward Taylor deserves a little more recognition.

[Pictures: Charleston Housetops, wood block print by Anna Heyward Taylor, c 1920;

The City, linoleum block print by Taylor, 1939;

Bennett's Rice Mill from the series "This Our Land," linoleum block print by Taylor, 1948;

White Egrets from the series "This Our Land," linoleum block print by Taylor, 1948.

(All images from the Gibbes Museum of Art.)]

Mana

2012-01-06T10:02:00.000-05:00

The word mana comes from Polynesian (first used in English c 1843) and is defined as "a dynamic power dwelling in and flowing from certain individuals, spirits, or things, and capable of producing great good or evil," or "power achieved by ritual means; prestige; authority," or "a concept of life force, believed to be seated in the head, and associated with high social status and ritual power." According to the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, it is "Among Polynesian and Melanesian peoples, a supernatural force or power that may be ascribed to persons, spirits, or inanimate objects. Mana may be either good or evil, beneficial or dangerous, but it is not impersonal; it is never spoken of except in connection with powerful beings or things."

Mana is an important concept in certain religions, but I'm thinking of it not in any technical theological sense, but in its role in fantasy. The fantasy connection is obvious, since mana is one model for how magic might work in a fantasy world. In the on-line fantasy role-playing game World of Warcraft and other games of its ilk, mana is the cost of casting spells. A magic-wielding character has a certain amount of mana, and each possible spell costs a certain amount of mana. That's probably the most common usage of the word mana these days: if you have enough mana, you can work magic. If you don't have enough, you need to get more. In World of Warcraft you regain mana by waiting for your supply to slowly replenish itself. If you don't want to wait, you can drink a mana potion, or eat mana-replenishing food, or benefit from the action of various spells. And when your mana reserves are once again full, you can cast all your spells again, boom, zap, kapow. Presumably in the fantasy universe of a book, rather than the mechanics of a computer game, mana could be regained by performing rituals, offering sacrifices, eating the hearts of opponents with a lot of mana, possessing objects of sacred power, and so forth. It might be interesting to imagine that mana is captured in objects by the work of skilled artists, that truly great works of art possess mana: power.

That brings me to the other thing I associate with the word mana. Mana was the subject of a talk I heard by artist Francisco Mendez-Diéz. He asserted that to be art, images must have power, and that powerful images come from deliberately looking for mana. That mana power, he said, can come from shared experiences, from authenticity and honesty to self, or from the act of adoration of an image or object. Meaning equals power. These are some interesting ideas, and while I don't think that I venerate raw power, for good or evil, to the extent that Mendez-Diéz seems to, he did say a few things I found very helpful in thinking about making and viewing art.

The first of these is the distinction he drew between images of power and images with power. Images of power are simply depictions of something that has no particular depth of meaning to the artist. For example, if I were to draw a picture of Zeus smiting things with thunderbolts, it would be a picture of power, but it would have no particular power of its own, since I don't much care about Zeus. Images with power, Mendez-Diéz said, are made when the artist is working with a subject that truly speaks to him, so that he's not merely depicting another's ideas and beliefs but is wrestling with his own. All this can get a little mystical for me, but I do very much like the reminder that as an artist I'll be doing my best work when I follow my own attractions, explore my own desire for understanding, and work to express my own visions authentically, rather than producing stuff that I imagine other people will want to buy. The reminder is equally valid for writing.

The other interesting point Mendez-Diéz raised was a question: Is it a unique quality of artists that they see power in a different way? (I certainly don't think I see power in quite the same way he does, but whether that means one of us isn't a real artist is another question!) Think of the phrase, "Oh, I see!" meaning, "I get it! I understand." If we cultivate our ability to see, does that give us greater insight, greater understanding? And if we possess greater understanding, does that give us greater power, greater mana? I'm leery of grandiose claims about the superiority of artists, but at the same time I do believe in the power of creative habits of mind. I do believe that all of us would benefit if more of us cultivated our ability to glimpse and pursue unexpected connections, to look for alternatives, and to find and create beauty all around us. So if mana is power that we can draw on by thinking creatively, then let's hope we never suffer from the frustrated cry heard in the midst of many a desperate battle in World of Warcraft: Out Of Mana!

[Picture: Papuan Idols, engraving from Ridpath's Universal History, Volume VIII, 1894;

Vision and the mechanism for response to external stimuli, woodcut from Tractatus de homine by René Descartes, 1644. (Image from National Library of Medicine Image Collection.)]

Illustrations by Fernand Léger

2012-01-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

Here's something interesting. Fernand Léger (1881-1955) is a French artist known for his own version of Cubism, Futurism, Purism, and all that was modern and populist during his lifetime. His work is usually characterized by bright blocks of color, machine-like people doing modern jobs, and lots of primary colors -- but his taste for bold geometric designs translates well to block prints. He made black and white wood blocks to illustrate a book by André Malraux in 1921.

Malraux's book, Lunes en Papier, (Paper Moons) was published in an edition of only 112 and includes three Absurdist stories illustrated with seven block prints by Léger. The publisher, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, also ran a gallery in Paris and was Léger's first champion when he first began to show his paintings and was feeling unappreciated by art critics.

Léger's black and white images are abstract arrangements of unshaded shapes, some of which I find quite pleasing. I think my favorite is the first one above. It has a nice balance, symmetrical without being static, monumental without being dull.

Thanks to the National Library of the Netherlands, where I found these images.

[Pictures: wood block prints by Fernand Léger, from Lunes en Papier by André Malraux, 1921:

from page 21, p 32, cover.]

Words of the Month - Don't Lose the Fat

2011-12-30T10:06:00.001-05:00

Here we are coming up on the New Year, and, having overindulged over the holidays, many a hopeful person makes a Resolution to lose some fat in the coming year. Nowadays we tend to think of fat as a bad thing best avoided. We divide up fats according to whether they're good or bad for our health: trans-fats, saturated fats, omega 3 fats… But English has many words for fats, and they tell us a lot about how we viewed fat in past centuries.

Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean...

fat - Let's start with the word fat itself. This word has been with us since Old English, keeping a stable meaning all this time. But some of the metaphorical uses of the word are more revealing. For example, think of the phrase living off the fat of the land, in which fat means the richest and best part. We didn't always think fat was such a bad thing.

suet - hard fatty tissue about the loins and kidneys of beef, sheep, etc.

tallow - hard rendered fat of sheep and cattle, used to make candles and soap

lard - rendered fat of hogs, especially internal fat of the abdomen (also v. adding fat (or, metaphorically, something else) into something) (Ultimately derived from Latin for bacon)

schmaltz - rendered chicken, goose, (or pork) fat, especially in German and Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine (from German, entered English via Yiddish, cognate with melt)

Having lots of different words for different varieties of something is always a good clue that that something is important in a culture. Traditionally, fat was an important source of energy for hard work - calories in a world where people weren't constantly getting more calories than they needed. Fat was also considered a delicious boost of flavor for any recipe. Consider the process of larding lean meat with fat… nowadays we work hard to trim the fat out of the meat, but the verb lard comes from a time when people worked to put more fat in.

Since the 1930's schmaltz has meant excessive sentimentality, presumably as in too much of a good thing. An idiom falling into the schmaltz pot meant receiving a stroke of good luck.

Note that the different words for fat above are divided not by their health affects as we tend to do nowadays, but according to where the fat comes from and how you use it, which tells you what was important to people then.

shortening - fat that is solid at room temperature used to make pastry or bread. Shortening is something that shortens dough, and "short" dough is crumbly or friable, whereas "long" dough is stretchier. (The OED lists its first use of shortening in 1823 and relates it to the sense of shorter fibers. Some sources, however, give the word an older birthdate and attribute it to an entirely different root meaning weak or timid. Believe whom you will.)

blubber - layer of fat below the skin of a whale or other large marine mammal (derived, apparently, as an imitative version of a Middle English word for bubble.) Allegedly blubber is high in "good" fats and low in the "bad" fats, and tastes like arrowroot biscuits.

Words for fat on people would, of course, be an entirely different list of words, all with their own slightly differing derivations and connotations. Maybe losing some fat in 2012 would be a healthy resolution for some, but not for the English language. I hope we don't trim the fat there!

[Picture: Jack Sprat and His Wife, Rosie, rubber block print by AEGN, 2001.]

Brender à Brandis Alphabet

2011-12-27T13:06:00.002-05:00

I got a wonderful Christmas gift from my parents - another block printed alphabet! Now that this alphabet is added to my collection, I'm sure more of Gerard Brender à Brandis's wonderful prints will be showing up in future alphabet posts, but here's an introduction to his work.

A Wood Engraver's Alphabet should really be called "A Botanical Alphabet." Each letter is represented by a beautiful, detailed wood engraving of a plant, most of them being common garden flowers, with a few exotics filling things out. Unlike me, Brender à Brandis used only common names for alphabetizing; no scientific names. (But he did have to cheat pretty badly for X: foXglove. (Compare some other artists' attempts at X).)

Gerard Brander à Brandis is a Canadian, born in Holland. He's a gardener and orchidophile and has done several other books of botanical wood engravings, which I have not seen (although you can find some of the images on-line.) I feel a certain sense of connection with another artist who works to portray something so celebrated for colors in a medium that allows only for form and pattern in black and white. But of course his style is very different from mine.

I just love the detail and texture possible with wood engraving. Many of Brender à Brandis's pieces are almost lacy. Many of them remind me of Renaissance diaper patterns (no, that has nothing to do with nappies. A diaper is a repeated design woven into fabric. Maybe I need to revisit this one in the Words of the Month some time.) Anyway, what I mean is that many of the pieces in this alphabet are designed with an equal pattern all over instead of a single point of focus. The Rose is an example of that.

My favorites are usually the ones that have high contrast, though. I like it when there are areas of black and white instead of everything an even level of texture. I really love Morning Glory, for example.

We're having a pretty mild winter here so far, but even so it's always pleasant to spend a little time among flowers in December.

[Pictures: Fireweed, wood engraving by Gerard Brender à Brandis, from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008;

Zinnia, wood engraving by Brender à Brandis, from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008;

Rose, wood engraving by Brender à Brandis, from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008;

Morning Glory, wood engraving by Brender à Brandis, from A Wood Engraver's Alphabet, 2008.]

G. Brender à Brandis's web site.

Gruss vom Krampus

2011-12-23T11:22:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Krampus

Here's an interesting mythological creature I hadn't heard of until a couple years ago: Krampus. Krampus is a hairy demonic creature, rather like a satyr with a long, pointed tongue. He began as a pagan beast, but when the Christian church gave up on eradicating him from his native Alpine regions, he was adopted into the Christmas tradition of various northern European countries. There he takes on the job of punishing bad children while Saint Nicholas rewards the good ones.

It's really quite horrible, both in theory and in practice. The mythological theory is that bad children will be punished with coal or sticks instead of presents. Very bad children will be beaten by the monster with switches and chains, and the worst children of all will be stuffed in Krampus's sack and carried away to be drowned, or devoured, or delivered straight to hell. Nice. Because nothing says "Christmas" like child abuse and sadistic vengeance.

The way this gets acted out in reality is not much better. Apparently roving bands of hideously costumed drunkards roam the streets terrifying young and old (especially young women, of course, since these hooligans are mostly young men.) The traditional night for such frolics is December 5, the eve of Saint Nicholas's Day. Are you afraid to leave the house? Then it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I suppose I could examine how this sort of anarchistic fantasy functions as some sort of pressure-release valve, giving juvenile delinquents a structured, limited arena in which to misbehave. Or perhaps I could discuss how fantasy threats - boogeymen - are used in cultures all around the world to encapsulate and personify all the dangers and evils that face children who don't learn the Right ways to behave. Maybe we could muse on the phenomenon that humans seem to want to invest all our celebrations with fantasy (Easter Bunny? Great Pumpkin? Elf on a Shelf, anyone?) Perhaps Krampus can teach us a lesson about how we tend to end up adopting the very cultural traits we try to reject.

In fact, there are so many directions the Krampus phenomenon could lead that I think I'll just leave it here, with an invitation to thought. I don't much like Krampus, but he's undeniably an archetype that humans have invented, adapted, and reinvented over and over throughout history and wherever we live. What does Krampus tell us about ourselves?

[As for these pictures, they are all Krampus postcards from the late 19th and early 20th century. Unfortunately, to my intense frustration, although images of Krampus abound on the web, none of them seem to be attributed in any way. Nobody even gives their dates. The last is taken from the book The Devil in Design by Monte Beauchamp (Fantagraphic Books, 2004) but I can't find any specific info about it, either. It pains me greatly to post images without their proper credit and information, but I simply cannot find the facts. Sorry!]

Christmas Treasury

2011-12-19T19:51:00.000-05:00

Do you know about this Etsy Treasury thing? People put together (or "curate" as they like to say) collections of items listed on Etsy that fit into a particular theme. It's a fun excuse for combing through the cornucopia that is Etsy, and it's a fun way to give some visibility to particular items. The etiquette is that you don't feature your own items in the treasuries you make, so it's also a fun way to share some love. And since the true spirit of Christmas is sharing the love, I decided that for today I'd simply present a treasury of Christmassy block prints from my fellow block-printing Etsy shopkeepers.

Enjoy!

[Picture: Paper Birch in Winter, rubber block print by AEGN, 2007.

(Also available in my Etsy shop.)]

Dinosaur Fantasy

2011-12-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

As every right-thinking six-year-old will tell you, dinosaurs are awesome. (I'm a big fan of dinosaurs myself, and am especially fascinated by the evidence that has led to the discovery that many therapods were feathered. Definitely cool stuff. Too bad most dinosaur fiction is behind the times on this one, but oh well...) It's certainly no surprise that dinosaurs should feature in many a fantasy or sci fi tale, from The Lost World by Doyle (1912) and The Land That Time Forgot by Burroughs (1918) to Jurassic Park by Crichton (1990). Interacting with dinosaurs is high on any list of geek fantasies. Here are a few dinosaur books we've enjoyed in our family.

The Enormous Egg by Oliver Butterworth - A farm boy discovers a large egg laid by one of his hens, and out hatches a triceratops. How to take care of "Uncle Beazley," how to find him a home at the Smithsonian… and how to deal with politicians getting up to their usual political shenanigans are the challenges faced by our young hero. This is a fun and funny tale, with the feel-good spirit of "Mr Smith Goes to Washington," combined with gentle satire of the foolishness of the powerful, and of course the fun of a giant dinosaur in 1950's New Hampshire.

How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague - Perhaps this isn't really a fantasy book… but what else would you call it when parents everywhere try to enforce bedtime on children who are full-sized dinosaurs (and a couple other prehistoric reptiles)? The funny rhyming text pairs wonderfully with the bright paintings full of clever details. I knew we'd found a winner when two-and-a-half-year-old T commented that her fussing brother was "sort of like a corythosaurus." (This book spawned an entire series, but I remain loyal to the original.)

Captain Raptor and the Space Pirates by Patrick O'Brien and Kevin O'Malley - This graphic novel is a masterful mash-up of all the cheesy old space adventure tropes with… dinosaurs, of course! Our hero is a space-suited velociraptor, flying his trusty spaceship with his loyal dinosaurian crew. It's an old tale made new and enjoyable, because who could resist Dinosaurs In Space? Definitely not me or my nine-year-old son P!

Dinotopia by James Gurney - Once again, it's the pictures that really make this book. The concept is "Lost World"-ish: shipwreck survivors pitch up on an island where dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures have survived, and developed a society jointly with humans. It takes the form of an explorer's journal, so although there is a certain unfolding of plot, it's really just an excuse to show all kinds of fun possibilities for such a dino-human civilization. We get to see everything from dung collection to the loftiest ceremonial monuments, along with notes on Dinotopian writing, timekeeping, architecture, etc. This book is most enjoyable for browsing. Younger kids won't read it through, but they still love the pictures.

Also worth mentioning are:

Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff - Okay, I never cared all that much for this one, but for a generation or more it was the book that introduced the fantasy of having a dinosaur for a friend.

The Strictest School in the World by Howard Whitehouse - I've mentioned this book before (here) but since it features pterodactyls, I had to include it here.

Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne - Again, not a book that inspires any passion in me (I find the whole series pretty insipid), but it is a good representative of many kids' first book about travelling to the time of the dinosaurs. I do appreciate the attempt to get kids excited about non-fiction topics and about using their imaginations.

I conclude with the traditional Dinotopian farewell: Breathe deep. Seek peace.

[Pictures: Uncle Beazley out for a walk, drawing by Mark Crilley, from The Enormous Egg, 2009;
Tyrannosaurus Rex, painting by Mark Teague, from How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, 2000;

Captain Raptor, painting by Patrick O'Brien, from Captain Raptor and the Space Pirates, 2007;

Treetown, painting by James Gurney, from Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, 1992.]

Carving Water

2011-12-13T09:37:00.000-05:00

Water is always tricky to portray in art, but at least paints, with their liquid texture, tranparancy, and ability to blend, seem like a natural medium for trying to capture water. But relief block printing? How do you portray something totally liquid and transparent by carving something totally hard and opaque? My two most recent prints, which I finished carving during my last two shows, were (entirely by coincidence) both water scenes. I tried slightly different techniques on each, and it got me

curious to look around for some different examples of water portrayed in block prints. As for mine, I don't think either is entirely successful, although I'm rather taken with the water in the Cormorant block, mostly just because it's a bit different from anything I've done before so it seems more interesting.

So, here's a pretty straightforward depiction of a bay by Louis Moreau in 1910. It's got lines in a wavy pattern, with just a bit more black to indicate dark reflections. It looks watery enough, but it's very stylized.

By contrast, here's a piece with remarkably photorealistic water. Indeed, it's based on a photo of nothing but waves. When the water is all there is in the entire piece, the artist (Vija Celmins) really has to get those details right because the viewer doesn't get any other visual cues. This piece is all about copying those organic shapes exactly from a snapshot of nature.

Here's some very serene water, depicted by… nothing. For the most part the water isn't carved at all (or is carved entirely away, depending how you think about it), but you know it's there because of the scenery. The absence of any wave lines gives the scene a feeling of deep peace.

And here's the opposite: raging water… but once again pretty stylized. I like the few white circles in amongst the lines that make up the waves. This is done by Lynd Ward from one of his graphic novels.

In terms of a really different technique, here's a cool example of one of the few ways in which hard wood comes out with a watery advantage. This artist (Merlyn Chesterman) has used the grain of the wood for the texture of waves. I love it! It must be fun to search for wood with the right sort of grain lines, and then build the scene out of the grain that nature gives you.

Lots of other pieces I've shown in other posts feature water, as do lots more of my own pieces. After all, we do live in a watery world so water is bound to show up in a lot of art. Keep your eyes open for all the different techniques printmakers use in the quest for the wateriest water!

[Pictures: Cormorants at the Old Pier, rubber block print by AEGN, 2011;

A Quiet Place on the Journey, rubber block print by AEGN, 2011;

Nice (Promenade des anglais), woodcut by Louis Moreau, 1910 (image from Pierre Alechinsky);

Ocean Surface Woodcut 1992, woodcut by Vija Celmins, 1992 (image from the National Galleries of Scotland);

Landscape, woodcut by Sigge Bergstrom, 1909;

Illustration from God's Man, woodcut by Lynd Ward, 1929;

Life Rock, Bear Rock, God's Finger, woodcut by Merlyn Chesterman (visit her web site here.);

Piping plover, rubber block print by AEGN, 2008.]

The Morality of "World of Warcraft"

2011-12-09T14:13:00.001-05:00

I am a rather unlikely player of the massive multi-player on-line role-playing game "World of Warcraft." For those not familiar with the phenomenon, World of Warcraft is a computer game on which you create a character which you then run around in the virtual world completing quests in order to gain experience and loot. Millions of people have characters, so some of the characters in the world (such as quest-givers and shop-keepers and random villagers) are controlled by the computer, but all the other "heroes" with whom you can interact are being controlled by other real people all over the world. Why do I play? Simple: "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." My husband D loves his computer games of all sorts, and more than five years ago I decided that if I wanted an activity we could take part in together in the evenings, it would have to be a computer game. So I signed up. I am now the proud(?) alter ego of a level 85 night elf moonkin druid as well as several lower-level characters.

There are things I really like about this game, even besides the fact that I play it with my beloved husband. It's a fantasy world, and I love the beautiful scenery and cool creatures. I love the silly extras, like the fact that each kind of character can dance and tell jokes. I love that you can collect pets that will run along behind your character just for fun. Many of the "boss fights" are interesting tactical puzzles that
must be solved, giving a satisfying feeling of mastery when your group finally succeeds. I'm in awe of the size and complexity of the world. But there are also things about World of Warcraft that I really dislike. One that's been much improved since I started playing is just how much time you have to devote to the dumb thing if you want to get through an entire chapter at a time. They've now made lots more bite-sized pieces, thank goodness. And of course I could get into the typical player complaints about how I hate the most recent changes to my favorite spells or the mechanics of some talent, etc etc… But the number one thing I dislike about World of Warcraft is its morality.

With a name like "World of Warcraft," you can imagine that this is a game about fighting, but it isn't the explicit violence that bothers me. Injury and slaughter are not depicted particularly graphically in this game, so even someone as squeamish and tender-hearted as I am doesn't get too disturbed by what they see and hear. What does disturb me, however, is the assumptions implicit in the laws of the universe as written into the code of the game. Quite simply, every problem can be solved with violence and only violence. Many quests, of course, are to go off and fight the enemy in circumstances that "Just War" advocates would find acceptable. But if a quest asks you to negotiate, chances are you'll get to the target and the only option the game gives you is to attack. Then after you beat up the target enough, he'll "agree" to your "negotiating." This is the way the laws of the World of Warcraft universe operate. But is it the way our universe operates? Or if the quest asks you to recover a stolen item, you're sent to a village and expected to kill every person or creature in the village until you find the stolen object on one of the corpses. The universe of the game presents this as perfectly straightforward and reasonable, but I find it insanely horrifying. Can you imagine applying this logic in our world?

Of course, World of Warcraft doesn't ask you to kill real people or commit real violence. You're just having your pixels do things to other pixels. Your average person can differentiate perfectly clearly between pixels and people. Besides, often you have to cooperate with other real people so that all your pixels can work together. That's a good thing, surely. The debate over whether violent video games cause real violence is certainly a valid and interesting topic of discussion that I think all parents need to consider very seriously when deciding what games their children should play and at what age and for how long. And responsible adults should be considering how they themselves are affected, too. I wouldn't class World of Warcraft among the really violent games: the first-person shooter games, the games with horribly graphic depictions of blood and carnage, the games in which the violence is portrayed in real-world settings where the victims look like real-world people. I think any normal, healthy human seeing World of Warcraft is perfectly able to draw the line between fantasy and reality when looking at the scenery, the characters, the magical spells being cast… At the same time, however, I do wonder how insidiously the myth of redemptive violence sneaks in. Unlike the beautiful fantasy setting and characters, the inner workings of the universe's morality are never explicitly stated to the player - and therefore never explicitly evaluated for their realism.

But this insidious sub-text is not confined to video games. The central message of the "Justice League" cartoon series aimed at children is that the solution to all problems is to hit someone. And if hitting doesn't work at first, hitting again, harder, will make things turn out right for sure. The central message of Pullman's popular "His Dark Materials" series of books is that any means are justified for even the most arbitrarily defined ends. The central message of any number of books, movies, television shows, and government policies is that violence never fails, and if it ever seems to be failing, it's only because it's just not violent enough. Perhaps the time has come for us to take this message out of the unnoticed, undiscussed realm of invisible assumptions, and treat it as the fiction it is, as fantastical as any other system of magic. Perhaps it's time we noticed that this is one of the elements of fantasy that doesn't translate well to the real world.

[Pictures: This huge, slovenly, mixed-up beast is my moonkin character;

Scenery in Zangarmarsh, with my moonkin character in night elf form;
Scenery in Nagrand;

Guild group by the bones of Marrowgar;

all screen shots from World of Warcraft game.]

Engravings by George Cruikshank

2011-12-06T11:44:00.001-05:00

George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was an artist and engraver who came to fame first as a satirical cartoonist, then later as an illustrator. He learned painting, caricature, and engraving as his father's apprentice, but he quickly outstripped his father. He was considered the "Hogarth" of his era for his social and political caricatures. His popularity

and influence are indicated by the fact that he was given a royal bribe not to "caricature His Majesty in any immoral situation" (in 1820). One of the causes he embraced later in his life was abstinence, and he eventually shifted from illustration to produce several series of engravings portraying the evils of alcohol.

But Cruikshank isn't here on "Black and White" just as an engraver. It's his work as an illustrator - and an illustrator of fantasy - that earns him a post here. Cruikshank illustrated some of Dickens's work, notably Oliver Twist (for which he claimed credit for much of the plot, to Dickens's irritation), but I'm most interested in his illustrations of fairy tales. I believe his first were for German Popular Stories,
the first English translation of the Grimm Brothers' tales. He also did a number of other fairy tales which he edited himself as a vehicle for his illustrations.

Many of Cruikshank's fantasy illustrations maintain his satirical style with rather caricatured depictions of noblemen and villains. He's been credited with being one of the first to put humor in illustrations for children. There's a more gentle humor in the look on Cinderella's face at the appearance of her fairy godmother - a bit taken aback, a bit surprised, maybe a bit dubious about this strange little old woman.

But I particularly like Cruikshank's backgrounds, especially the interiors. In his illustration for The Golden Bird, Cruikshank puts a wonderful castle in the background (and I like the whimsey of the young man riding the fox's tail.) The illustration for Jorinde and Joringel
captures perfectly the strange, brooding atmosphere of the story with its dark castle hung with hundreds of bird cages. I love the intricate vaulting.

(You can see more Cruikshank illustrations - and tons more fairy tale illustrations by dozens of other illustrators - at the great site SurLaLune. Check it out.)

[Pictures: A Splendid Spread, engraving by George Cruikshank from The Comic Almanack, 1850;

Fagin in the condemned Cell, copperplate engraving by Cruikshank from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, 1838 (first two images from Wikimedia Commons);

Frontspiece for Cinderella and the Glass Slipper, engraving by Cruikshank from Fairy Library edited by Cruikshank, 1854;

The Golden Bird, copperplate engraving by Cruikshank from German Popular Stories by Grimm, 1823 (image from Rosenbach Museum & Library);

Jorinde and Joringel, copperplate engraving by Cruikshank from German Popular Stories by Grimm, 1823.]

A Farmful of Block Prints

2011-12-02T09:39:00.001-05:00

Today's theme is block prints of farm animals. Why? Since P and T were four years old we've created a tradition in our family of buying them farm animals for the holidays. We've bought the family rabbits, llamas, honeybees, more rabbits, guinea pigs, sheep, ducklings, chicks, more rabbits, a water buffalo, and one year I even bought myself a camel. This December we'll be getting our children a couple of goats. This would be quite messy and noisy, not to mention illegal in our suburban yard, except that we aren't the ones who keep the animals. They get sent all around the world to help families in need.

Heifer International is one of my favorite organizations because their help solves so many problems at once - hunger, lack of education, degradation of the environment, oppression of girls and women, community divisions, injustice… By giving families farm animals and teaching them how to care for their animals in an environmentally sustainable way, those families are able not only to feed themselves, but to send their children to school. Both woman and men are able to prove their competence at earning and controlling property, and at teaching others the skills they've learned. Because recipients must pass on the gift of livestock and skills to others in their communities, not only do the physical gifts get spread, but so do the respect, generosity, sense of community, and
bridging of barriers. Please visit Heifer's web site and read all about what they do.

So every year around Thanksgiving or Christmas we buy our children farm animals that aren't for them. We do also give the kids a token gift that they can keep, usually a small stuffed animal or figurine to remind them of their chosen animal. One can argue about the philosophy of expecting to receive gifts for oneself when giving to others, but for children we've found that the little toys they receive help them to remember what we've done and why. Every time they get tucked into bed with their stuffed rabbits they might just

remember how important it is that we try to make the whole world a better place as best we can. Every November when P and T get to look through Heifer International's gift catalogue to see what animal they'd like to share this year, they are reminded of how important it is that every person in the world get a chance to work hard, care for their families, and share with others in turn.
In the past couple of years we've started giving Heifer animals to our parents, our brothers and sisters-in-law, and our nephews, too. It's so much fun trying to match up what animal would be most pleasing to everyone, and P and T sometimes help with that, too.

If you don't do so already, please consider enriching your holiday gift-giving this year with "alternative gifts." It doesn't have to be farm animals. You can give gifts that help the environment to those who love wildlife and the outdoors, gifts to foster the arts to those who love music and art, gifts to soup kitchens for cooks, gifts to urban gardening initiatives for gardeners, gifts that foster education for teachers… Let your imagination widen out until it embraces the entire Earth, and then show your family and friends how much you really care - about our whole beautiful world.

[Pictures: Two Cows - South Dakota, rubber block print by AEGN, 1997;

Family Portrait, rubber block print by AEGN, 2001;

Jewelweed, rubber block print by AEGN, 2006;

Three Rabbits, rubber block print by AEGN, 2009;
Hen & Chicks, rubber block print by AEGN, 2009;

One Hump or Two?, rubber block print by AEGN, 1998;

Home, rubber block print by AEGN, 2008.]

Words of the Month - Unmentionables

2011-11-29T11:48:00.001-05:00

Cultures around the world invest their languages with taboos so that some words are considered "bad." Most commonly, "bad words" are those that refer to bodily functions, sex, and religious subjects too holy or too evil to be spoken of. There's nothing surprising about this - culture is all about defining acceptable behavior. And as a good little girl with Prude Pride I don't use "bad words" in my own speech, believing that use of lots of cusswords is not only potentially obnoxious, but also betrays a certain laziness and lack of creativity. However, while I don't find "bad words" themselves particularly interesting, there is a linguistic phenomenon that I do find fascinating: when speakers are so anxious not to be vulgar that they start to avoid or modify perfectly "good" words that happen to sound just a little too similar to something unacceptable.

The Victorians, according to the legend, were so shy of referring to people's legs that they couldn't refer to the legs of tables or chairs, either. I don't know whether this is true, but it isn't implausible. Languages adopt silly conventions like this all the time.

Take the example of the word cock.

It begins all the way back in Old English as the male of the domestic fowl. By the end of the fifteenth century it was being used to mean a pipe and valve for liquids (as well as referring to a number of other more specialized or uncommon items). So far so good. By the mid eighteenth century, however, it had also come to be a vulgar term for penis (possibly by extension from the water spout definition…) Well, as soon as that sort of slang gained currency, how could any respectable person mention domestic fowl in polite company? A decent substitute is rooster, which gained currency (chiefly in the US) in the early nineteenth century, around the time we were going all Victorian. And if you're going to be truly polite you have to start using the word faucet, too. Less likely to be misconstrued, you know. It was around 1840 that B.D. Walsh noted: "Cock-roaches in the United States… are always called 'roaches' by the fair sex, for the sake of euphony." (He didn't mean euphony, of course. He meant euphemism.) The mere sound cock apparently couldn't pass the lips of a lady no matter what its actual meaning.

But don't think this sort of behavior was confined to those uptight Victorians. Do you say the name of one of our fair planets cautiously so as to avoid the sound of "your anus?" It's my hypothesis that the pronunciation of Uranus was shifted some time in the 1970's or 80's by people every bit as over-genteel as the Victorians. I admit that I have little evidence to confirm this hypothesis, however, because information about historical pronunciation is not easy to come by. It would be interesting to study newsreels and television through time for evidence of if and when a shift took place.

I suspect that the pronunciation of harassment in the US has also shifted due to squeamishness about the syllable ass. The pronunciation harris-ment has been the British version right from the start, but in the US har-ass-ment was standard until about the time of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill controversy in 1991, when newscasters found themselves having to say the uncomfortable word with unwonted frequency. But just use the British version and - hey presto - you're completely inoffensive. (Really annoying, perhaps, but inoffensive.)

One of the coolest things about the human capacity for language is that we're never just saying what we're saying. With every word we're communicating a vast wealth of information about ourselves and our relationships with the society around us. When I speak (or write) I'm happy to be perceived as genteel, polite, and inoffensive… but really, let's just let the poor rooster be a cock!

[Picture: Chanticleer, rubber block print by AEGN, 2009.]

The Biggest Block

2011-11-25T15:03:00.001-05:00

While we're on the topic of big things, how about the biggest wood block print in the world? According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest woodblock print in the world was 281 feet and 9 inches long. Entitled "Type A," it was made in 2007 by Christopher Brady, an art graduate student. I'd love to show you a picture of the full print so we could see what the piece looks like independent of its world-record-holding status, but alas, I couldn't find a straight-up picture of the piece anywhere. (There may not even be one. Apparently it ripped during measuring, and has since been divided up and sold in smaller segments.) My info, such as it is, comes from an article on the University of Mississippi web site. The article implies that the piece is not printed from a single 282 foot long block. When you think about it, that's
pretty obvious - after all, wood blocks just don't come that big. But what I wish I knew was whether the separate blocks were fastened together in some way to be inked and printed all at once, or whether the parts of the woodcut were each printed separately.

Here's another oversized wood block print: in this case the block is a floor (the floor of a theater orchestra pit). It amuses me that it's referred to as a "floorcut." This is attributed to Thomas Kilpper, although of course it took a whole crew of people to accomplish the project. You can find a lot more details at the blog Printeresting, where I ran into it.

And finally, another fun thing that the world of the oversized block prints embraces is printing with road rollers. When you're dealing with a block larger than even the big presses then of course backs of wooden spoons aren't really feasible, either. A road roller really makes an excellent press, and I can see how it would be a lot of fun getting together a whole bunch of artists and fooling around with the technique. If you google "road roller printing" or something along those lines you'll end up with a number of videos of people printing big blocks this way. Here are a couple of photos of a 24 foot long print from a road roller printing event in London in 2010.

So, with all this inspiration, who's going to aim for the next world record? A round 300 feet perhaps? I look forward to seeing it!

[Pictures: Christopher Brady with Type A, wood block print by Brady, 2007;

block of Cómo puede superarse el estado de negligencia?, wood block print by Thomas Kilpper, 2011;

The London Fields, linoleum block print by about 20 artists, 2010;
and the rolling of the block (photos by Teresa Eng).]

The Biggest Bird

2011-11-22T17:16:00.001-05:00

This is the time of year when people in the US are turning their thoughts to big birds. The turkey, as you may know, was almost our national bird, with Ben Franklin as its advocate. But this being a blog about fantasy, I'm not talking turkey. If you want a big bird, nothing less than a roc will do.

Mythologies around the world have stories of monster-sized birds, and it's not hard to see why. From the power of actual giant raptors such as condors and eagles, to fossilized eggs of extinct birds that were even bigger, to the idea that such birds as ostriches might be the chicks of even huger birds, it's easy to imagine that a truly enormous bird was eminently plausible. The roc, or rukh, originated in the Middle East and India, apparently amalgamating various bits and pieces of mythology, as these things do. But here's what we know about the roc now.

Marco Polo reported in the 1290's that the roc is "for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long

and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure." Rocs can also destroy entire ships by dropping boulders on them - at least, they could destroy wooden sailing ships that way. I assume they have a harder time with modern steel ships, although I haven't heard any reports of recent roc attacks. Perhaps that's because the rocs build their nests in more inaccessible places now, so that humans are no longer found destroying roc eggs.
The roc's range is the China Seas, along the coasts and islands from Korea to Malaysia, though clearly those for whom elephants are a major portion of their diet must be concentrated at the southern end of that range. However, Madagascar is also a hot spot for rocs. Those, presumably, eat African elephants. I don't know whether the Madagascar roc is a separate subspecies, or whether the range is continuous. The roc is generally described as being white, although that would seem to make it harder for unscrupulous traders to pass off green or brown rafia palm fronds as roc feathers, as they have been known to do.

Whether you procure your roc in Madagascar or Korea, I recommend the following recipe this holiday season:

Dig a pit large and deep enough to hold the cleaned roc. Line the pit with large, fire-heated stones and cover them with about ten bushels of greens and a couple sacks of sweet potatoes. Rub the roc well with oil, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Get the roc into the pit somehow. A tow truck or backhoe might be useful, or you can do it the old fashioned way by gathering all your friends and family to help roll it. This can get messy, so don't wear your party clothes at this stage. Cover the roc with more greens, douse with a couple buckets of water (or barbecue sauce, if you prefer), spread a layer of very large cabbage leaves to protect the food, and then cover the entire thing with a layer of earth or sand. Let roast until done. You'd better start right away if you want it to be finished in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Bon appetit!

[Pictures: Detail from Ferdinand Magellan sailing through the straits, copper engraving by Andrianus Collaert from a drawing by Johannes Stradanus from Americae Retectio, c 1585;

Sindbad carried off by the Roc, illustration by H.J. Hunt, from The Arabian Nights Entertainments ed. by Andrew Lang, 1898;

Anonymous roc - I found this picture on the web uncredited, and I'd love to track down the artist because I just love it. If anyone recognizes this one, please let me know!]

Julius Griffith's Lino-cuts

2011-11-18T14:57:00.001-05:00

Julius Griffith (1912-1997) was a Canadian artist, who also spent a chunk of his life in England. He has a very distinctive style in his linoleum block prints where all his lines are wiggly, which he did by rocking the blade as he cut. I have no idea of the reasons behind this unusual method, and I think in some of his pieces it's more effective than others. But sometimes it's really quite amazing how well it works in situations where I would never think to try that sort of line.

Here's an example where you can see just how homogenous Griffith's cuts are. There are just a few thin, non-wiggly lines, as in the edges of some of the tree's branches and the supports of the front porch roof, so you know he can do straight lines when he wants to. And yet for many other places where I'd expect a straight line, like the bottom edges of the roofs or the right side of the tree trunk, he's chosen to use dashed gouges. I like the way it looks on the side of the middle house and the very edge of the left house, but I don't like that I can't quite tell what's going on with the broom(?) and something(?) on the porch of the middle house. I feel like my eyes aren't quite in focus!

This one I think is a lot of fun. I love the way the wiggly lines work on the stripes of the boy's shirt and the pages of music. I think it even works well on the piano teacher's arm that supports her on the bench - I love how the gaps in the wiggles mark her elbow so well. I've used the technique of rocking my cutter to get wiggly lines in some of my blocks when I specifically wanted a zig-zaggy texture, but I've certainly never used it as a method of shading, or simply filling in a large area that's smooth in real life. It's so much fun to see how differently different people conceive things.

One final example. I think the rough gouges work very well on this cathedral, lending it a real feel of monumental stone. I especially like the black, shadowed walls and the places where edges are defined by a wider space between white wiggles. I'd like the piece even better without the small, indistinct people at the bottom, but that's probably just me.

Griffith is an artist whose work I had not encountered before I saw an example in George A. Walker's Woodcut Artist's Handbook. I'm so pleased to have discovered these unique, interesting examples of block printing. (I notice that the earliest example here was done when Griffith was already 70 years old. I don't have any examples of his earlier work, but I'd be curious to see some!)

[Pictures: Three Houses, lino-cut by Julius Griffith, 1993;

Piano Lesson, lino-cut by Griffith, 1993;

St. James [Cathedral, Toronto], lino-cut by Griffith, 1982.

(Images from D&E Lake Ltd.)]

The Sorcerer's Song

2011-11-15T11:18:00.001-05:00

One of the most popular Victorian poets, though not always considered in that light, is W.S. Gilbert, the librettist half of Gilbert and Sullivan. I'm a huge fan of some Gilbert and Sullivan operas, though not such a fanatic as to love them all. While in college I had a blast as a cellist in the pit orchestra of the Yale Gilbert & Sullivan Society, where my favorite productions were definitely The Pirates of Penzance and Ruddigore. Ruddigore could probably fall into the category of fantasy, or at least Gothic horror, what with its Bad Baronet and his haunted portrait gallery. But another Gilbert and Sullivan production that contains elements of fantasy is The Sorcerer. The Sorcerer, which opened in 1877, is not one of the more popular of the duo's operas. Indeed, I've never even seen it - my library system doesn't have any sort of recording of it available. But I have seen the lyrics of its patter song reprinted as a poem about magic. It's not the greatest poem, painfully forced in places. The patter songs from Pirates ("The Very Model of a Modern Major General") and Ruddigore ("My Eyes Are Fully Open") are definitely cleverer as well as being better poetry. Still, they aren't fantasy, so I'm happy to share with you here a fantasy poem of a very different tone than those I usually cite.

The Sorcerer's Song

Oh, my name is John Wellington Wells.

I'm a dealer in magic and spells,

In blessings and curses,

And ever-filled purses,

In prophecies, witches, and knells.

If you want a proud foe to "make tracks,"

If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax,

You've but to look in on our resident Djinn

Number seventy, Simmery Axe.

We've a first-class assortment of magic

And for raising a posthumous shade,

With effects that are comic or tragic,

There's no cheaper house in the trade.

Love-philtre, we've quantities of it,

And for knowledge if any one burns

We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet

Who brings us unbounded returns.

For he can prophesy with a wink of his eye,

Peep with security into futurity,

Sum up your history, clear up a mystery,

Humor proclivity for a nativity.

He has answers oracular, bogies spectacular,

Tetrapods tragical, mirrors so magical,

Facts astronomical, solemn or comical,

And, if you want it, he

Makes a reduction on taking a quantity.

Oh, if any one anything lacks

He'll find it all ready in stacks

If he'll only look in on the resident Djinn

Number seventy, Simmery Axe

He can raise you hosts of ghosts,

And that without reflectors,

And creepy things with wings,

And gaunt and grisly spectres.

He can fill you crowds of shrouds,

And horrify you vastly.

He can rack your brains with chains,

And gibberings grim and ghastly.

Then, if you plan it, he changes organity

With an urbanity full of Satanity,

Vexing humanity with an inanity

Fatal to vanity,

Driving your foes to the verge of insanity.

But in tautology on demonology,

'Lectro biology, mystic nosology,

Spirit philology, high class astrology,

Such is his knowledge, he

Isn't the man to require an apology.

Oh, my name is John Wellington Wells.

I'm a dealer in magic and spells,

In blessings and curses,

And ever-filled purses,

In prophecies, witches, and knells.

If any one anything lacks

He'll find it all ready in stacks

If he'll only look in on the resident Djinn

Number seventy, Simmery Axe.

Now, are you ready to experience how this piece was intended? Not as a poem sitting somberly on the page, but as a patter song, a showpiece of virtuosic silliness. There are various versions on-line, but I've chosen to link you to this one to start off because it's got the lyrics as subtitles. Thom King in the title role of High Desert Opera's The Sorcerer. Enjoy!

[Pictures: poster for the 1884 revival of The Sorcerer, artist unknown;

detail from a poster for three G&S operas, H.A. Thomas Lithograph Studio, 1879.

(from Wikimedia Commons.)]

The Sun and the North Wind: an Allegory of Power

2011-11-11T11:49:00.001-05:00

Do you know the fable of the Sun and the North Wind?

The Sun and the North Wind were having an argument over which of them was stronger. When they saw below them a traveller, they devised a competition to settle their argument: whichever one could force the traveller to remove his cloak would be judged the stronger. The North Wind went first and blew as hard as it could. It was certainly very powerful, but the stronger it blew the more tightly the traveller clutched his cloak around him. When it was the Sun's turn, the Sun simply shone bright and warm, and very soon the traveller was taking off his heavy cloak of his own will.

In my single brief brush with the world of "real" artists, a summer class for art educators at MassArt, one of the visiting lecturers was an artist who conceived of his work as powerfully political. He had done a lot of pieces depicting the violence in Central America, including images of executed bodies, tortured prostitutes, and leering politicians and soldiers. Goodness knows this was an area in which the world could stand to be made an awful lot better, and goodness knows I admire anyone who sees a problem and tries to do something about it. This artist's images were certainly powerful, and yet they were images that made me pull my coat more tightly around myself.

Artists have a power that should not be abused. We create. We put into the world things that were not there before. We give people new images, new stories. G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown explains how he solves murders, "I don't try to get outside the man. I try to get inside the murderer… I am inside a man. I am always inside a man, moving his arms and legs; but I wait till I know I am inside a murderer, thinking his thoughts, wrestling with his passions; till I have bent myself into his posture of hunched and peering hatred; till I see the world with his bloodshot and squinting eyes, looking between the blinkers of his half-witted concentration; looking up the short and sharp perspective of a straight road to a pool of blood. Till I am really a murderer." I believe this is what writing is all about - inhabiting each character, or finding each character within myself, feeling how any character might be me or I them but for the factors of chance and choice. But if I truly have that murderer in me, how do I use that power?

Or another analogy: I carve my blocks with sharp-edged tools. The same tools, with their cutting blades, can be used to create beautiful works of art or could be used to destroy, to mutilate, to cause pain. It's the same tool either way. The tool is neither good nor bad. The question is how the tool is used.

I think it's important to be mindful of what we're adding to the world. If I paint a scene of rape, am I giving the world a message that rape is horrible, or am I merely giving the world one more rape to look at? If I describe the horrors of war, am I defying our culture's glorification of war, or am I merely dwelling amidst the horrors - and worse yet, forcing my audience to dwell there, too? Am I sounding a wake-up call, or am I riding the shock value?

I don't know the answers, and of course there is more than one way to try to make the world a better place… But I do believe that depictions of violence must be handled as carefully as if they were real - that is, as if by painting murder we might really commit it. We must always be cautious that we add to the world only what has the potential to improve it, and beware that we don't slip into degradation.

[Pictures: The Sun & the North Wind, rubber block print by AEGN, 1998;

The Sun and the Wind, wood engraving by Thomas Bewick, from Bewick's Select Fables of Aesop and Others, 1871 (first edition 1818).]
(Quotation from The Secret of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton, 1927.)

Sci Fi Comes to Open Studios

2011-11-08T11:23:00.000-05:00

This weekend was another Open Studios show and for me it was the biggest sales weekend in years. Yay! A portion of those sales were made possible by a little bit of science fiction that has just reached the world of art shows. Of the 18 or so artists showing in the large auditorium where I had my display, at least four of us were using The Square for the first time this weekend. The Square apparently first came out in a very limited way about a year ago, but it's obviously hitting its stride now. What is it? A small square plastic thingy that plugs into the top of an i-phone and allows you to swipe credit cards. After you swipe, the transaction works about like ordering something on-line: the card is authorized, the money is transferred directly into my bank account, and a receipt is e-mailed or texted to the purchaser if they want. A record of the transaction is also e-mailed to me. If you want you can take a photo of the piece that was sold and attach that to the e-mails. And the part everyone gets a kick out of is when the buyer signs the i-phone screen with their finger!

I don't actually have an i-phone, but D does and he very generously allowed me to take it with me to my show this weekend. (I treasure this as a symbol of True Love, because sometimes it can be hard to tell which he loves more: me, or his technologies!) Over the weekend I had eight people request to pay with credit card. A small aside here: when I first started selling at Open Studios shows seven years ago everyone assumed that the artists wouldn't be able to accept credit. If people were expecting to buy something they brought their checkbooks or wads of cash. If they hadn't expected to buy anything they might run out to the nearest ATM and return with cash later. But as more and more artists began to get portable card swipers of various sorts, more and more buyers began to expect it. In the past couple of years I've begun to lose the occasional sale, although I will say that when people really want something they usually find a way! How many of the eight sales that used credit this weekend would have been lost completely if I had not had the Square I don't know, but I think it's safe to say that I would have lost at least a few sales. And I think it's also true that as more and more artists get the ability to accept credit, the number of buyers who are prepared to pay by check or cash will shrink ever faster.

So, my over-all review of the Square? Highly Recommended. The little device itself is free and there are no up-front costs or monthly fees. If you get one and never use it, you're out nothing. It's tailor-made for those of us whose use is likely to be seasonal or sporadic rather than constant. Having an account with a monthly fee doesn't make much sense when I won't be doing any sales at all seven months out of the year, so I like that I pay for it only when I actually use it.

One of the four of us using Square this weekend said she had trouble getting hers - it didn't arrive in time for one sale, and then in the ensuing muddle she ended up with two. She pointed out that they have no customer service to speak of and it's hard to talk to someone in case of a glitch. The other three of us, however, all received our Squares in the mail within 2-5 days of signing up, just as advertised. Once you have it, it's easy to set up the (also free) app on the i-phone, and once you start a transaction the app walks you through each step clearly and easily. Some people seemed to have trouble with the swipe - you have to pull the card very quickly and firmly and it might take a little while to get the hang of it. I didn't find it too hard, though. Also, a couple of times the phone required multiple attempts to authorize the card because it was having trouble connecting to the internet. You'll definitely want to be sure of a good solid connection in your location or there could be much frustration. The artist next to me had printed out some information about the Square in case customers were wary of it - but no one balked at all. In fact, they all seemed rather tickled by the novelty of it. (There was one woman who asked for a receipt, and when I touched the button for it her e-mail address auto-filled in. She'd just purchased something from an artist on the other side of the room and the magical ether had remembered the e-mail that went with the credit card. We both agreed that this was very cool but a little creepy!)

As for the cost, Square keeps for itself 2.75% of each transaction for which it's used. I had a couple of people kindly ask me whether I preferred that they pay with check or credit and I chose check because obviously I'd just as soon not pay that 2.75% when I can avoid it. However it really is not a bad percentage - especially when you compare it with the 45% per transaction offered by the gallery owner who came through the show recruiting!

I haven't yet seen my bank statement with all the money safely deposited, so I suppose there could still prove to be some problem, but as far as I can tell, the Square worked beautifully and I give it a definite thumbs-up.

[Pictures: Square plugged into an i-phone,

The blocks I was carving this weekend,

photos by AEGN, 2011.]

Monsters in Hats

2011-11-04T11:18:00.000-04:00

I know I'm a little late for Hallowe'en, but this seems as good a time as any to share a theme D, my brother, and I were bandying about a while ago. We were observing that werewolves seem to look quite natural and appropriate wearing top hats, and I had this idea that every sort of iconic monster must have its own favorite style of headgear. Some of the matchings that pleased us the most were

zombies wear boaters

skeletons wear long nightcaps

space aliens wear granny bonnets

velociraptors wear backwards baseball caps

I thought that twelve of these pairings, depicted in a campy vintage poster style, would make an amusing and enjoyable calendar. (If anyone wants to put such a thing together, you're
welcome to my genius idea. Just be sure to send me a copy!) But I'm far too lazy to do that myself, so I've decided to make this post an interactive activity to get you started in the rich topic of monster millinery.

1. Print out the following lists and draw lines to connect them according to your own sense of what's appropriate.

2. Add more monsters and more headgear as desired.

3. Imagine how much more pleasantly and knowledgeably you'll be able to converse with the next well-dressed monster you meet.

4. Have fun!

bigfoot balaclava

blob baseball cap

chupacabra beret

ghost bishop mitre

giant squid boater

mermaid bonnet

minotaur coonskin cap

mummy cowboy hat

Nessie deerstalker

skeleton fez

space alien lamp shade

swamp monster pith helmet

Tyrannosaurus rex propeller beanie

vampire Robin Hood cap

werewolf sombrero

yeti swim cap with plastic flowers

zombie top hat

[Pictures: Vampire in a Mae West hat, photoshop adaptation from movie posters;

Giant squid in a mitre, photoshop adaptation from an illustration by Alphonse de Neuville, wood engraving by Hildibrand, for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, 1871 ;

Ghost in a sombrero, photoshop adaptation from an illustration by Richard Westall, copperplate engraving by E. Scriven, from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, 1802;

Monsters in hats and assorted spare hats, pen sketch on paper by AEGN and TPGrundy (TPG did the spare hats and the skull, I did the ghost, alien, and mummy, and we both think we did the velociraptor!), 2011.]

Kirchner's "Father Müller"

2011-11-01T17:21:00.001-04:00

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) is not, on the whole, an artist whose work I admire. As one of the founding members of "Die Brücke" group attempting to break away from the traditional academic style of painting, I think his work tries way too hard to be harsh and shocking just for the sake of being different. But I do have to give him and his fellow proto-Expressionists credit for helping to revive and elevate the woodcut as a legitimate artistic medium. And they weren't just using it to reproduce black line drawings as it was generally being used at the time. They experimented with what the medium could do: simplifying, using large areas of black, creating rough-hewn textures, and experimenting with bold patterns.

One thing I dislike about Kirchner's work is that his people all look so sour and mean. But I found a couple of exceptions, which I like very much. The first is "Father Müller," who was a Swiss farmer in the area where Kirchner was staying while he tried to recover from the trauma of World War I. I love the stark dignity of this portrait. He looks as if he has a bit of a twinkle in his eye despite being weary. Kirchner printed only a few copies of this block, two in color and the rest in black. I actually like the color version better, even though the black version shows the carving more clearly.

I also like this portrait of "Ludwig Schames." Schames was an art dealer, which explains the nude in the background. Apparently Kirchner made the portrait from memory. I love his beard!

[Pictures: Father Müller, wood block print by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1918,

(color version from Moma collection,
black and white from Yale Art Gallery);

Portrait of Ludwig Schames, wood block print by Kirchner, 1918, (image from Yale Art Gallery).]

Words of the Month - Borrowed Fantasy

2011-10-28T15:32:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite things about the English language is how we don't just borrow words from other languages - we adopt them. We bring them into our family, embrace them, and love them as our own until we don't even remember where they came from. No doubt I'll be doing more posts on borrowings over time, because it's such a rich topic, but today I'll share the exotic origins of a sampling of words that the fantasy genre just couldn't do without.

Let's start with words that might be found in Dungeons & Dragons, where many an older fantasy geek was first immersed in the world of magic…

magic, bronze - Avestan (Middle East)

ceremony - Etruscan (Europe)

shaman - Evenki (Asia)

bard - Gaelic (Europe)

rogue - Sinhalese (South Asia)

horde - Polish (Europe)

Do you like high medieval fantasy?

saga - Icelandic (Europe)

chivalry - Norman French (Europe)

saber - Hungarian (Europe)

crusade, pilgrim - Provençal (Europe)

ebony, ivory - Egyptian (Africa)

How about Star Trek and sci fi?

trek - Afrikaans (Europe/Africa)

robot - Czech (Europe)

technology - Greek (Europe)

orbit - Latin (Europe)

Angels and demons and assorted monsters and beasts?

cherub - Akkadian (Middle East)

paradise - Avestan (Middle East)

abyss - Sumerian (Middle East)

Dracula - Romanian (Europe)

vampire - Serbian (Europe)

zombie - Kongo (Africa)

yeti - Tibetan (Asia)

sasquatch - Salish (North America)

jaguar - Guarani (South America)

shark - Maya (Mesoamerica)

anaconda - Tamil (South Asia)

piranha - Tupi (South America)

A few more words, perhaps for horror or urban fantasy…

geek - Dutch (Europe)

tattoo - Tahitian (Pacific)

bizarre - Basque (Europe)

taboo - Tongan (Pacific)

cannibal - Carib (South America)

bludgeon - Cornish (Europe)

fog, kidnap - Danish (Europe)

voodoo - Ewe (Africa)

juju - Hausa (Africa)

ninja - Japanese (Asia)

berserk - Norse (Europe)

And finally, what would fantasy be without

purple - Phoenician (Middle East)

map - Punic (Middle East/Africa)

chocolate - Nahuatl (Mesoamerica)
How else will you recover from an encounter with Dementors?

Did you know where English got all those wonderful fantasy words? Forty languages from all around the world are represented here. Some of the words come from languages that are long extinct, living on only in their words that have passed into other languages. Some words are recent enough borrowings that most people still recognize their foreign origin. I hope this list gives you a new appreciation for the wonderful diversity of the English language - and for the human tendency to embrace fantasy wherever we find it.

[Pictures: Magical Symbol, rubber block print by AEGN, 2008 (commissioned for a not-yet-published fantasy novel by a friend of mine)
Ninja, "Kuni Ghika wood block print," (not sure what that means!) 19th century (Image from Live Auctioneers.)]

Handbook by George A. Walker

2011-10-25T09:45:00.000-04:00

For anyone who's interested in block printing, I highly recommend The Woodcut Artist's Handbook, by George A. Walker. It's got loads of great illustrations, many by Walker, but also by a whole variety of other artists from Albrecht Dürer to Ralph Steadman, who inks up scraps of old, used wood. Although the title says "woodcut," this book also covers linoleum block printing and wood engraving, and makes an effort to include a wide variety of styles.

The chapters cover "Selecting Materials for the Block" through signing and numbering "The Edition," and address the basics as well as more advanced materials and techniques. In addition to the illustrations of block prints there are also lots of illustrations and diagrams of step-by-step processes, how to hold tools, the different types of cuts made by different tools, how presses work, etc.

I confess that I didn't read every word of all the chapters. I skipped the details of how to assemble your own engraving block, or how to repair Resingrave, for example. But it looks like in everything Walker does a good job of covering both the basics for those who don't know much about block printing, and the advanced details for those who are already pretty immersed in the craft.

The bottom line, though, is that I enjoyed the illustrations. Walker's selection included lots of contemporary artists I wasn't familiar with and whose work I'll be keeping an eye out for. He has a particular emphasis on Canadian artists, since those are the people he works with and knows. Again, that meant it was a selection I wasn't so familiar with. And Walker's own work is quite diverse, though he appears to have a special interest in political, urban, and slightly darker interpretations of things. Here are some of his pieces . On the whale above I like the contrast between the scratchiness of the whale and the controlled swirls of the water. As for the caterpillar, I'm sure everyone recognizes it as Alice's acquaintance in Wonderland. I like its scruffiness.

I was definitely glad to have found this book to look through. Check it out.

[Pictures: Whale, wood (or Resingrave?) engraving by George A. Walker, 2004;

Advice from a Caterpillar, wood engraving by Walker, c. 1985.]

Walker, George A., The Woodcut Artist's Handbook: Techniques and Tools for Relief Printmaking, Firefly Books Ltd., 2010.
Walker's Web Site

Fantasy Hallowe'en Costumes

2011-10-21T14:36:00.000-04:00

Let me just say right up front that I have always loved dressing up, but that I have always believed that half the fun of costumes is making them. I've got no problem with buying an accessory or a special hat or something, but grabbing a complete pre-made costume off the shelf really defeats the purpose. I always made my own costumes as a child (with some help from my mother) and I've always made P and T's costumes… until this year, when I've put them in charge of assembling their own. I hate seeing so many kids coming to our door in boring, generic outfits, and I'm always delighted to see anyone displaying a bit of creativity.

Naturally my taste in Hallowe'en costumes has tended toward fantasy. The Wizard of Oz kept me in costume ideas for several years in elementary school: I particularly recall the Cowardly Lion, Ozma of Oz, and the Wicked Witch of the West. Another year I was Artemis. Freshman year in college a whole group of my friends and I went as characters from Alice in Wonderland. (As the one with long blonde hair I was inevitably Alice.)

P and T have been even more fantastical. At age three they were dragons, and I was very happy that they could still fit in the same costumes when they wanted to be dragons again the following year. (Those were a lot of work!) At age five they were griffins (lion-headed griffins, to be specific). At age seven P was a dragon again (necessitating the creation of a whole new dragon costume) and T was a fairy. And last year P was a phoenix and T a "Hogwart's-style witch."

Of course there are plenty of non-fantasy costumes I've made and admired over the years. (One of the best ever was when T and P were salt and pepper shakers as toddlers.) One could argue that any costume at all is a form of fantasy, since costumes allow you to pretend to be something completely different, for good or ill. (There's also the "fantasy" aspect of the fact that so many female costumes
involve improbable quantities of cleavage, thigh, and shoe heel. But that's a rant I won't go into today.) Suffice it to say that Hallowe'en is a holiday with many pros and cons, but perhaps its most positive attribute is when it serves to empower children (or any age) to imagine something, create the costume representing their vision, and get out and show it off without embarrassment. When it's child-directed and involves actual creativity, not just the wielding of a credit card, Hallowe'en is a fun, empowering, imaginative, wonderful holiday. So let your creativity run wild!

And now it's time to get busy for this year's costumes. One of our jobs for the weekend will be helping P and T get to work on their costumes. I hope you have fun with yours!

[Pictures: T as a green dragon, 2005;

T and P as lion-headed griffins, 2007;

P as a phoenix, 2010, photos by AEGN.]

An Owl and a Pussy-Cat

2011-10-18T14:34:00.000-04:00

This weekend was an Open Studios show and that means I sat and carved all weekend. On Saturday I carved Cat Art. This one was fun and different for me because it's actually a portrait of Talia, our new kitten. (We've had her for about three months now, and she's about nine months old. She doesn't look kittenish any more.) Our former cat of happy memory, Nightshade, served as the model for much previous Cat Art, but the cat images she inspired were all rather generalized. Nightshade's blotchy mulch-colored fur didn't translate well into bold black and white, so all my cats ended up being solid black or white, or wholly fictional tabby-stripes. Talia, however, is a true classic tabby, mostly black with narrow ticked whorls. I thought I'd try actually reproducing her pattern in this piece, and it turned out better than I had feared at the point of carving. I especially love the white rim around her eyes while she snoozes!

On Sunday I carved an owl, based on a screech owl, though without any claims of Audubon-worthy accuracy. Instead of being about reproducing an accurate portrait of a creature, this piece is more about pattern and texture. (T is quite excited about it, since two of her favorite people have owl companions: Harry Potter and Athena.) I saw a program about owls once from which I learned that owls are actually pretty stupid birds, which makes their use as a symbol of wisdom delightfully ironic. But even if keen intelligence isn't their specialty, owls are still wonderful, amazing creatures.

Of course my two days of carving were interrupted for sales (if never as many as I'd like!) And actually the carving was interrupted for quite a few very nice conversations, as well. I'm thinking of three in particular that were especially gratifying. Two of these were people who had bought books last year as gifts for children (a daughter with Hey, Diddle Diddle! and a grandson with Amazing, Beguiling, Curious, to be specific.) They reported back to me how much the children loved the books, and I really appreciate this feedback. I pour a lot of love and care into those books and art. They come from deep in my own imagination and my own visions of the world, they are personal and precious to me, and then I throw them out into the world and they disappear. I never hear back from most readers of my books, or from recipients of my art, so when I do find out that someone out there is sharing my enjoyment and treasuring the connection I've made with them, that really means a lot to me. The third example was a four-year-old boy who came in with his parents. Last year they'd bought a vintage car for his bedroom, and this year they came back to choose a second car to go with the first. He also tried his hand at carving the rubber and was excited to learn the process of how the car prints were made. He was preparing to redecorate to a "big boy" room, and he wanted my cars to be part of it. I am honored and pleased that something I created is a part of that boy's life!

[Pictures: Curled Up with a Good Book, rubber block print by AEGN, 2011;

Screech Owl, rubber block print by AEGN, 2011.]

Renaissance UFO Woodcut

2011-10-14T12:07:00.001-04:00

Here's a nifty confluence of wood block printing and speculative fiction! This woodcut made by Hanns Glaser is entitled "Heavenly apparition over Nuremberg on April 14, 1561." The woodcut was actually made in 1566, based on reports of what UFO enthusiasts call a mass sighting of an alien battle in the skies over Germany. The report, printed in a broadsheet called the Nuremberg Gazette, says that at dawn on April 14, 1561 many people looking at the sky witnessed large numbers of "cylindrical shapes from which emerged black, red, orange and blue-white spheres that darted about." Crosses the color of blood and a large black spear-shaped object were also involved, fighting with one another for about an hour, after which time some of the shapes flew into the sun while others fell to earth in clouds of steam. Some people of the time took the vision as a divine warning. Some people of this time take the account as proof of an extraterrestrial space battle.

I was unable to determine much about the authenticity of the "newspaper" account. The document is in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich's collection of early news, but it's certainly anomalous. It's hard to find any unbiased information discussing this stuff. (Perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise. I used to get annoyed with "In Search Of" and such television programs, that begin with intriguing questions which always, always, ALWAYS end up inconclusive and unresolved.) But the authenticity of Hanns Glaser's 1566 woodcut seems to be unquestioned. The question is just what, in fact, it shows - how accurate a depiction is it of whatever happened five years earlier, and just what exactly did people see on that April morning?

My brother and I have come up with four plausible scenarios.

a) Aliens A are attempting to conquer the Earthlings but Aliens B arrive to defend Earth. B's win, and leave without making contact, nobly following their Prime Directive not to interact with the primitive species.

b) Aliens A are escorting captured rebels (Aliens B) from their remote base to the Galaxy headquarters. As they pass Earth, Aliens B attempt to make a break for it, but are recaptured by Aliens A, who then proceed upon their way.

c1) Future Humans A come back in time with their space age technologies to assassinate some Nurembergian ancestor of Adolph Hitler. However, Future Nazis B come back and thwart them, so Hitler does indeed rise to power as we know.

c2) Future Resistance Fighters A come back in time with their space age technologies to assassinate some Nurembergian ancestor of Adolph Hitler's unstoppable mad science genius Von Schnell. Future Nazis B attempt to stop them, but fail in a thrilling battle in the skies. The Von Schnell progenitor is assassinated, thus there is no unstoppable Nazi science genius after all, and the Allies are indeed able to defeat the Nazis as we know.

Whatever the truth of the celestial phenomenon, Glaser's woodcut is something real to be enjoyed. In the image I like the city under the black arrow just like Theed beneath a star destroyer. I like the little Renaissance gents pointing up excitedly (and understandably so). I like the way the sun looks sort of bemused as balls hover around his face like pesky flies, and crescents arc gigantically behind him. It's certainly intriguing! When it comes to UFOs I'm a skeptical agnostic, but when it comes to block prints, I'm a true believer. This Glaser print is a perfect example of how block prints, like photography nowadays, can be timeless fine art or a sensational journalistic tool reflecting the popular preoccupations of their times.

[Picture: Himmelserscheinung über Nürnberg vom 14. April 1561, woodcut with hand painting, by Hanns Glaser, 1566. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, with thanks.)]

The Wisdom of Norton Juster

2011-10-11T11:11:00.000-04:00

Ten days ago I was delivering some art to the venue of a show, and I arrived before the woman I was to meet. So I picked up the free copy of the Parents Paper magazine that was sitting out, and was delighted to discover therein an interview with Norton Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth. It turns out this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Phantom Tollbooth, and a musical production of the story is also coming to town. (There was a contest/drawing to receive tickets to the show and both P and T eagerly wrote up paragraphs to submit. I'll report back if we end up winning some tickets… but don't anyone hold your breath.)

The Phantom Tollbooth, as everyone knows, is its own species, not really like any other book. But it does share with many of my favorite books certain characteristics, such as likeable, decent characters, a happy ending, a sense of fun and wonder, and narration and vocabulary that don't talk down to children. I was really delighted to read about some of Juster's ideas behind the writing of the book.

First of all, he said The Phantom Tollbooth "did everything wrong. The general theory at the time was that no child should ever pick up a book and find in it anything he didn't already know about, so they tended to discourage any kind of interesting plots or stories or conflicts. To top it off, they said fantasy was bad for children because it disorients them." I still see this attitude, as when T's first grade teacher kept trying to encourage her to read something "more realistic." But I am by no means convinced that realistic fiction is more realistic in any respect other than the decor of the story. (I've said more about this in my post How Juvenile Fantasy Will Save the Earth.) Or, as Juster said of Baum's Oz books, "They started me thinking in a wonderful, imaginative way and made things possible that you knew were not possible - but then again, they were." He went on to say of The Phantom Tollbooth - but I think it's equally true of all good juvenile fantasy - "Certain things don't change. What [the book] deals with are still the basic issues for kids in life." In other words, fantasy is about what's real and important, and it gives kids a way to explore those issues that supposedly realistic fiction often does not.

When asked what advice Juster had for parents on reading, he replied, "One thing that bothers me now is the constant pressure for kids to read earlier and earlier. A lot of people want to get their 3-year-old kids into perfect pre-kindergarten, then the perfect kindergarten, up the line to Yale and Harvard, and it's just a very mistaken idea. What you want to do with your kids is to let them roam around not only in the world, but around their own head, and not immediately tie them into a patterned, structured way of doing things." He went on to praise the effect of word play, but again I would argue that it isn't just word play (much as I love that) but all of fantasy with its impossible possibilities. "Word play is wonderful because it changes language, changes your understanding, and opens up the way you perceive things in a completely different way." This does not disorient kids - On the contrary, it frees their minds, their hearts, and their imaginations.

If you want to read more of Juster's thoughts on writing, childhood, The Phantom Tollbooth, and more, here are a couple more interviews:

Interview with RoseEtta Stone

Interview with Laura Miller at Salon

The quotations from Norton Juster in this post were taken from: McGregor, Amanda, "The Real Power of Imagination," Boston Parents Paper, October 2011: 30-32.

[Picture: "The Phantom Tollbooth Map Quilt," squares made by Westminster Middle School students, assembled by AEGN, 1994. This quilt is huge, about 10 x 8 feet. Each of the 20 squares was made by a group of 3 or 4 seventh grade students as part of a unit integrating English, math, and art.]

Maria Sibylla Merian

2011-10-07T15:09:00.000-04:00

for Ada Lovelace Day

First of all, who's Ada Lovelace and why does she have a Day? Briefly, Lovelace (1815-1852) was the first (theoretical) computer programmer - even before there were computers! She was an incredibly smart, gifted mathematician at a time when women didn't generally have the option of a career in science or technology. Ada Lovelace Day was started as a way to celebrate female role models in scientific fields. You can find out more about Lovelace here and about the Day named after her at its official site. One part of the day is for people to blog about a woman in the sciences, and I thought I'd join this noble cause.

Now, technically I am not a woman in the sciences. I have no degrees in any scientific field, no one pays me for my research or inventions or my work in technology… But I've always been interested in science, especially natural history.

And, of course, I am a mother of a couple of curious kids, and that means there's always scientific research and observation going on at our house. One of the chief areas of our scientific studies is the natural world: birds, plants, insects… And that brings me to Maria Sibylla Merian. After all, this is not a science blog. This is a blog about art (oh, and fantasy, but that's another story!) And while we tend to think that women "couldn't" be scientists before the twentieth century, in fact there have always been loads of women naturalists -- and many of them were artists, too. Observing and sketching the natural world was one of the more conventionally acceptable ways for scientifically-inclined women to work. But conventional Maria Sibylla Merian most definitely was not.

Merian (1647-1717) was the daughter of an engraver and printer, and the step-daughter of a still life painter, who encouraged her artistic talents. The subjects she chose to draw and paint as a child were specimens of insects and plants that she collected in her neighborhood. Some artists would have been content to draw pretty pictures, but Merian was a scientist as well as an artist, and she carefully studied those insects, especially caterpillars, moths and butterflies. (Only a true scientist could appreciate the bugs eating her roses!) She was the first to study how the life cycle of moths and butterflies really worked, and to observe all the stages and the plants associated with the stages. And she made beautiful, detailed drawings in her sketch books.

She married a painter, but twenty years later, at the age of 38, she left him and lived with her mother and two daughters. (Some years after that they were officially divorced.) In 1699 Merian and her unmarried daughter travelled to Surinam. She stayed for two years, studying the plants and insects there. During her life she published a number of gorgeously illustrated books of her observations, and her classifications of many insects are still in use today. Her books were not embraced at first by scholars of the day because most were not written in Latin (and presumably because she was a woman), but they were much valued by the wealthy for their beautiful block printed illustrations. (Most of her books were self-published, too. Just saying.)

Merian was among the first to study insects seriously, she was the first to describe accurately the relationships between certain insects and plants, she was the first to identify many of the insects and plants of the Surinam area, she was among the first to pay attention to the effects of one organism on others in its environment, and she was among the few who could mix serious science and truly masterful art. The wood block prints of her drawings (usually hand-colored) are celebrated as a unique blending of scientific accuracy with beauty of composition and execution. She's an inspiration to anyone with an interest in art or science, but especially those of us who love both.

(And just imagine what Merian would have done had she discovered any of my time flies in her travels!)

[Pictures: "American cherry," wood block print with watercolor from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by Maria Sibylla Merian, 1705;

Lily, wood block print from Erucarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis by Merian, 1717;

Rose, wood block print from Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung by Merian, 1679;

Cassava, wood block print with watercolor from Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium by Merian, 1705;

Grossularia Hortensis, wood block print from Der Raupen wunderbare Verwandlung und sonderbare Blumennahrung by Merian, 1679.

Pictures are taken (with much appreciation) from the Center for Retrospective Digitalization, Göttingen (GDZ).]

Time Flies

2011-10-04T09:38:00.003-04:00

You know the old saying, "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." I always enjoy that sort of linguistic shenanigans. So two weeks ago, as I was heading upstairs to bed, I had a vision: time flies. I pictured an antique entomological plate illustrating an array of clockwork insects… Of course it took me ages to fall asleep that night as I kept jotting new ideas on the pad of paper by my bedside. The next day I started in sketching. What a blast! I was having a wonderful time thinking up all different ways to incorporate clocks or time-telling or clockwork into steampunky bugs. It amused me to make twelve of them, and although some are obviously modeled on various different sorts of insects, they each have a single set of wings, that being a characteristic of the true order of flies. (Of course, these insects are not order diptera; they're in the order tempusfugita.)

As it always does, real life interfered a bit, in the form of the usual family responsibilities, as well as a commission that I really had to knuckle down and spend some serious time on… But whenever I got a chance I sketched more time flies. When I had twelve I cut them all out and arranged them on a single sheet of paper, and put in the captions and numbers. I guess the steampunk vibe would be more consistent with a Victorian style, but in fact there's no steam here. What I was really picturing were the woodcuts illustrating some of the earlier volumes of natural history. I enjoyed picturing some seventeenth century naturalist discovering these strange flies and sketching them as marvelous curiosities. Were they glimpsed in some never-before explored meteor crater? Or perhaps in the lost world of a jungle cave? Or do they breed in the dry dust of long-abandoned bell-towers?

Once I had arranged my final composition, I transferred the pencil sketch onto my rubber block and began to carve. I carved out a few flies a day, figuring out the black and white as I went along. I generally aim for a nice balance of white with black lines and black with white lines. (As usual, I didn't do much in the way of texture. I always admire block prints with lots of detailed gradations in texture, but although occasionally I make an effort to stretch in that direction, it just doesn't seem to be my natural style.)

And finally I was able to ink it up, tweak the carving a bit more here and there, and print my run. (Twelve, of course!) I used cream paper for a suggestion of antiquity. I matted up two of them, but ran out of cream colored mat board, so I guess I'll have to deal with that soon, since I need to be preparing for my next Open Studios show. (Natick Artists Open Studios, Oct. 15 -16. Come say hello if you're local!)

I really enjoyed this entire block, sketching, carving, printing, and all. Of course only time and a few shows will tell whether the art-buying public shares my sense of humor on this one, but I've been quite delighted with the whole thing. (I added this design to my CafePress collection, too!) It just goes to prove that time flies lead to having fun!

[Pictures: Time Flies, rubber block print by AEGN, 2011;

carving, pressing, and pulling the print, photos by Tom Grundy, 2011. (Thanks, Tom!)]

Words of the Month - Fairy vs Faerie

2011-09-30T13:42:00.001-04:00

Picture a supernatural being of diminutive human form and possessing magical powers. What do you call this magical personage? A fairy? Or perhaps you favor faerie? What about fay or fey?

Each of these words has a slightly different history, with different connotations in fantasy now. We'll start with the basic fairy.

fairy - This word entered modern English around 1250-1300 from Middle English faierie, (They sure didn't stint on vowels, did they?) which was borrowed from Old French, and which ultimately derived from Latin Fata, fate. Its first usage, now obsolete, was "enchantment," as in "Don't believe your eyes; all that you see is fairy." The next twist to the meaning, now archaic, was "the realm of magic and magical beings, fairyland." And finally the word came to mean the little people themselves, which is how it's used now.

How little are the Little People really? That has varied widely from legend to legend and throughout history. Sometimes the fairies are tiny, sometimes taller than humans, sometimes so insubstantial or illusory that their size is mere appearance without reality. But generally speaking, I think fairies tend to be small, while faeries are more human-sized.

faerie, faery - The primary definition of these variants is given as "fairyland," and the second usage is as an adjective describing the magical land or its denizens. "A supernatural being" is a more minor definition. We have Edmund Spenser to thank for this spelling being in use at all. While spelling variations certainly occurred throughout the early history of the word, it was Spenser who deliberately chose these spellings in the late 1500's for The Faerie Queene, his masterpiece of shameless flattery for Queen Elizabeth I. The faeries in Spenser's poem have little to do with the fairies of folklore, and his use of the alternate spelling has left a legacy of different connotations for the different spellings. I think of fairies as being diminutive sprites, wilder, more mischievous, probably cuter… While faeries are more noble and courtly, but possibly also more powerful and dangerous. However, I also tend to see this spelling as rather pretentious and faux Ye Olde - which, perhaps ironically, may have been exactly how Spenser intended it when he chose it back in 1580.

fay - Again, this word was originally an adjective and is only recently shifting to include a noun definition. It appeared in English around 1350 - 1400 from Middle French feie or fee, but ultimately from the same Latin root for fate, as in a spirit in control of the future, and hence any sort of magical spirit. I think of a fay fairy or fairyland as being particularly wild and unpredictable.

fey - Defined as "whimsical, strange, supernatural, enchanted," I assumed this word was just another one of the spelling variations in the family. Surprise! It's a much older word, and from a completely different root. Fey was in English before 900, deriving from Old English faege, meaning "doomed to die." The ultimate derivation of the word is unclear, but its development seems to have moved from weakness and timidity through visions and premonitions, to suffering from enchantment, to a sort of etherial insanity. When used for the people of Faerie, however, I think fey retains its connotations of strangeness, otherness, and danger.

Which spellings do you prefer? What different connotations do the different variants evoke for you?

[Pictures: "Mama slipped a berry under each fairy," colored pencil by AEGN, illustration from Kate and Sam to the Rescue, 2008;

The Fairies' Home, lithograph by Currier & Ives, 1868, from the Library of Congress Digital Collection.]

Teitelman Collection of Woodblocks

2011-09-27T13:47:00.000-04:00

The American Sunday-School Union was the most prolific publisher of children's books in nineteenth century America (which gives you a good idea of why non-didactic books like those by Lewis Carroll and Beatrix Potter were so beloved!) But the American Sunday-School Union publishings did have lots of illustrations, mostly printed from wood engravings. These wood blocks were the property of the publisher, not the artists, and were kept and reused through multiple printings (and probably multiple publications, too.) Although names of some of the artists are available, including George Gilbert (d. 1836), Alexander Anderson (1775-1870), John Warner Barber (1798-1885), Augustus Kollner (b. 1813), and James Barton Longacre (1794-1869), the individual blocks are not labelled with their artists or their carvers, so they're effectively anonymous.

The entire collection of woodblocks of the American Sunday-School Union was eventually purchased by S. Robert Teitelman, and was left at his death to the Library Company, which is now digitizing the collection. On their web site they have photos of the blocks, along with an image to show how it prints. The ultimate aim is to match up all the blocks with their actual prints in publications, but for now the images shown for most of the blocks are approximations done by scanning the block and photoshopping. Of course, this process doesn't really give you the right result. The main issues are that the image is not reversed from the block (meaning it is reversed from how the actual printed image appeared) and that large
carved away areas, especially backgrounds, appear black when they ought to be white. For the block print of the Earth you can see all three images: the photo of the carved block, the approximation of its image, and a page from a printed book in which the image actually appears. You can see how hard it is to get a sense for the finished print by looking at the block or its scanned approximation! Still, it gives you an idea, and the real value of this collection is the ability to see the carving of the blocks themselves.

I love the grace and delicacy of this lily, and the sly glance of the lion below. Since these are nineteenth century wood engravings they are all about the tiny little lines, reproducing line drawings as opposed to really using the unique properties of the relief print medium. You don't get much of a sense of carving from looking at the print. But that's why it's so much fun to be able to see the carved block itself and really see the strokes of the tools where wood has been carved away.

[Pictures: View of Jerusalem, wood block;

Earth and the sun, wood block, scan, and printed image;

Lily, wood block and scan;

Lion, wood block and printed image,

all from the American Sunday-School Union collection of the Library Company.]

A Few Lesser-Known Treasures

2011-09-23T19:04:00.001-04:00

Juvenile fantasy has been a hot genre since the success of Harry Potter, and I couldn't be more delighted. I used to think I'd read a pretty good sampling of the genre, but now there are way too many new books coming out every month and I can't possibly be an expert even in the stuff with lots of buzz. (Besides, there's no way I'll ever read all the new stuff when I don't do vampires!) But of course the down side of all this new stuff is that a lot of really excellent juvenile fantasy falls between the cracks, gets forgotten, or doesn't get the notice it deserves. So today I'll list a handful of books that I think are not very well known. I'll be surprised if there aren't at least one or two that you've never heard of. And if you have a favorite gem that you think needs more attention, please let us all know!

The Facttracker, Jason C. Eaton, 2008 - We all (P, T, and I) got a big kick out of this one. The just small enough boy (who has no name because all his facts about himself have gone missing) and the Facttracker (whose job it is to supply the world with facts) must save their town (and the world) from being overrun with lies (most of which are very silly). The philosophy of the importance of lies struck me as a little suspect, although I guess if you substitute the word "fiction" for the word "lies" then I'd be happy with it… But the real joy of the book is its exuberantly oddball goofiness. The goofiness begins even before the story begins, if you bother to read the dedication, which starts out with the usual family members and editors, blah blah blah, but about halfway through goes on to "I'd like to thank… Todd for inventing a new computer that auto-writes novels for you whilst gently massaging your feet and whispering 'life is water' over and over,… Cindy for informing me that a giant hula-hooping ninja space robot was trying to steal my new computer, Parnell and Marinoff for helping me defeat the space-robot with the power of love and an even bigger robot, Grant for defending me before the intergalactic tribunal…" and so on. It gets zanier. There are no hula-hooping ninja space robots in the actual book, but there are snails, a good explosion, a mountain of sweet potatoes, an octocycle, tuna fish sandwiches that never go bad, and a lot of lies.

Jane's Adventures In and Out of the Book, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, 1966 - This is not one of the all-time greats, I admit, but it's a good fun read that hits lots of favorite fantasy themes. Jane (who conveniently lives in a castle with parents who are never around to cramp her style) discovers a book whose pictures transport her into their scenes. With this fun device Jane gets to have serial adventures involving, among other things, a heroic resistance group, a giant jungle, being bug-sized, a sinister sultan, and (outside the book) a great flood. It would be a good introduction to inviting kids to imagine where they might want the book to take them.

Ronia the Robber's Daughter, Astrid Lindgren, 1981 (1985 in English) - This book is apparently pretty well known in Europe and was adapted into a movie there, but I don't think it's so well known here in the US. Lindgren is more famous here for Pippi Longstocking, and this book definitely involves some of the same themes of letting children run wild and fend for themselves. The plot is a standard Romeo and Juliet set-up, with Ronia and the son of the feuding tribe's chieftain becoming friends despite the enmity of their parents. The writing makes the characters strong-willed, infuriating, charming, likeable, and altogether believable. The descriptions of the setting and the children's self-education in the woods are lovely.

Once on a Time, A.A. Milne, 1917 - This really isn't juvenile fantasy, although there's nothing in it that a child shouldn't be reading. But its irony and wry commentary will probably be over the heads of most children. Nevertheless, it deserves a mention as a great example of the fractured fairy tale. There's a plot to take over the throne by an addict of largesse-throwing, there's a war involving kings disguised as pig farmers and an iconic ginger mustache, there's a prince enduring a very embarrassing transformation, and a maid who wants nothing more than to be able to dance like a fairy. It's funny and satirical and sweet, and it ends happily ever after.

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic, Jennifer Trafton, 2010 - In this book our hero, a messy girl with a missing father and a missing blue hat, finds herself in the position of having to preserve her island home from the certain destruction that will result if the giant sleeping beneath the mountain should wake up and rise. Along the way are some great characters, including the selfish king, the perpetually worried Worvil, a big-footed Rumblebump, and our hero's mother, who has very strong moral objections to everything from turnips to giants. P did not like the beginning at all - it had too much scariness and grouchiness, and we hadn't had a chance to become sufficiently fond of the characters to make it seem worthwhile - but I convinced him to let me keep reading aloud for a couple more chapters, by which time all three of us enjoyed it very much.

I hope you find something new and enjoyable here!

[Picture: Little Miss Muffet, rubber block print by AEGN, 2002.]

"Still Life by Lamplight"

2011-09-20T09:59:00.002-04:00

You can probably guess that this linoleum cut was done by Pablo Picasso. (I made fun of Lord Dunsany's long name, but it turns out that Picasso's full name is much more ridiculous: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. And I can't get the bank to understand my own mere two middle initials.)

Picasso (1881-1973) is, of course, one of the most famous artists, his name synonymous for many people with twentieth century art. Personally, I find much of his art more interesting than appealing, but he was certainly prolific enough that everybody ought to be able to find at least a few of his pieces they really enjoy! One of his pieces that I really enjoy is this linoleum block print.

"Still Life by Lamplight" was done in 1962, while Picasso was in a period of working a lot with lino cuts. An article I found from Marc Rosen Fine Art says this piece is a reduction print, made from one block carved and printed in five different

states. Looking at it, however, I'm not sure how that technique produced the red and green printed without any overlap. Of course, one thing Picasso was a real master of was experimentation, so it would hardly be surprising that he and his printer Arnèra came up with plenty of techniques that I haven't thought of! Here's an interesting image of the final state of the block, printed in black only. For once I don't like it better than the color version! For once it definitely looks like only a small part of the whole.

I like lots of things about this "Still Life by Lamplight," especially the design of the goblet and the patterns of the red and yellow light, but my favorite thing of all is the lightbulb and the starry glow around it.

[Pictures: Still Life by Lamplight, linoleum block print by Pablo Picasso, 1962;

One of a series of progressive proofs of Still Life by Lamplight, linoleum block print by Picasso, 1962 (picture from Marc Rosen Fine Art, Ltd.)]

Edgar Allan Poe's Fantasy

2011-09-16T09:26:00.002-04:00

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) dabbled in many genres, particularly horror and mystery. (His work was influential in multiple genres, too.) If you count ghosts, angels, demons, and the supernatural as Fantasy then a large proportion of his work includes at least elements of fantasy.

And travellers now, within that valley,

Through the red-litten windows see

Vast forms, that move fantastically

To a discordant melody,

While, like a ghastly rapid river,

Through the pale door

A hideous throng rush out forever

And laugh -- but smile no more.

(from "The Haunted
Palace," (1839))

But see, amid the mimic rout

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes! it writhes! with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

(from "The Conqueror
Worm," (1843))

An interesting element of Poe's work, though, is that his stories and poems are usually ambiguous enough to admit of at least one interpretation in which everything has a logical explanation, as in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Even when fully supernatural things occur, Poe's narrators are often insane or drug-addled to the point where the reader is not required to believe in the accuracy of anything they report, as in "The Black Cat," "Ligeia," and "The Tell-Tale Heart." That makes them a little questionable as fantasy. Into that category falls his most famous poem, "The Raven," (1845).

Like much of Poe's other work, I think "The Raven" hovers near the edges of the fantasy genre. But if nothing else, the dense, magical-sounding language evokes that fantasy feeling of wonder, mystery, and possibility -- even if it is the Gothic possibility of horror. Horror has definitely never been my thing, but the language of "The Raven"

is so seductive that I memorized most of it. (I never did bother with a couple of the middle stanzas, but I made sure to memorize the beginning and end, and enough of the middle to fill in the progression of the plot, such as it is.)

Here are a few of my favorite sections for your delectation (or go ahead and read the complete poem.)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore —

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door —

Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.[…]

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" —
Merely this and nothing more.[...]

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us — by that God we both adore —
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting —
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! — quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!

[Pictures: Something at my window lattice, wood engraving from an illustration by Gustave Doré, 1884. To my delight credit has been given to the actual engraver, too: Frederick Juengling. (And thanks to ArtPassions for the image);

Raven, wood block print on chine collé, by AEGN, 2000.]

Here Be Dragons?

2011-09-13T10:36:00.001-04:00

I was thinking about maps and unexplored territory the other day, and the exciting and romantic phrase "Here be dragons" signifying the terror and wonder and limitless possibility of the unknown… Only it turns out that the saying "Here be dragons" is almost as fictional as the dragons themselves. Apparently there exists only one old map with the phrase. The Hunt-Lenox Globe from around 1503-1510 has the Latin HC SVNT DRACONES on the eastern coast of Asia. (Alas, not visible in any photo I could find.) Whether the phrase was ever intended to refer to actual dragons is also a subject of debate. Clearly this was not a phrase medieval cartographers used to describe the unknown. So, what's the deal with the dragons in unexplored territory? And how did the myth of "Here be dragons" arise?

For the first question, there are certainly a fair number of ancient, medieval, and renaissance maps with pictures of dragons, mythical beasts, or real beasts that seemed every bit as fantastic as dragons to people at the time. For example, elephants and walruses both feature on maps as strange, monstrous creatures inhabiting exotic territories. It seems that the earliest map we know of with a proper dragon on it was the Ebstorf map from the 13th century. (The dragon has the company of a basilisk and some other strange critter, too.) The Ebstorf map was made from 30 goatskins and measured 3.6m x 3.6 m - That's a serious map. It was destroyed in the bombing of Hanover during WWII, but luckily there were at least several photographs and reproductions of it that had been made before it was lost forever, just one more casualty of war.

Another nice example is the "Carta Marina" of Scandinavia (1539), which has a wealth of fabulous monsters in the oceans, plus a beautiful wyvern way in the north (in the upper right of this detail).

But the question of where the "Here be dragons" myth came from turns out to be a mystery. Apparently no one can explain it! There is a nice summary of the question by Erin C. Blake. I find it fascinating that something can have such a hold on the popular imagination without any apparent source! Of course the idea that this phrase was common on ancient maps must have gotten started somewhere. Someone must have started the rumor… but apparently no one's tracked it down.

There's one final twist to the story. According to Wikipedia, ancient Roman and Medieval maps actually had unexplored areas marked HIC SVNT LEONES - "Here are lions" - as a warning of unknown perils. Several sources mention this, and "Here be lions" seems to be a well-known phrase in Europe (although I'd never heard it before), just as everyone knows "Here be dragons..." But this is the thing -- nobody seems to mention many actual examples of maps that warn of lions in unexplored lands. I wonder whether the lions might be almost as mythical as the dragons. Better just stick with Terra Incognita if you want to be safe… But if you want to be enticing, I say go with dragons!

[Pictures: "Hunt-Lenox Globe," engraved copper, c. 1503-1510, (collection of the New York Public Library);

detail from the "Ebstorf map" (reproduction), ink on goatskin, 13th c;

detail from the "Carta Marina" by Olaus Magnus, woodcut, 1539 (collection of the Uppsala University Library);

detail from the "Anglo-Saxon Mappa Mundi," ink on parchment, c 1025-1050, (collection of the British Library).]

Antonio Frasconi's Wood Block Prints

2011-09-09T09:57:00.001-04:00

Antonio Frasconi (born 1919) was raised in Uruguay and moved to the USA in 1945. He worked as a gardener and as a guard at an art museum, where he went on to have his first show of his wood block prints. (Does that mean I can expect a show at the Cleveland Museum of Art where I worked one summer as a security guard? Oh,
how I wish!)

Frasconi has illustrated quite a few books, including a number of bilingual children's books, which is where I had seen his work first. In the children's books his pictures often include blocks of flat color that I don't like so well, so I was delighted when I started looking up more of his work and found that he also does lots of black and white that I really love.

In stark contrast to the children's book illustrations, Frasconi has also done a fair bit of work that's very political, including a series of portraits of "The Disappeared" victims of dictatorships in Uruguay. In fact, Frasconi's work shows a
range of subject matter that I find fascinating: the murder victims of "The Disappeared," animals, architecture, fables, portraits, and more. For example, his "Migration" pieces are really interesting. There are other pieces that I find much more pleasing, but I think it's cool that Frasconi chose the wheeling flocks of birds as his subject, and I admire the patience it must have taken to carve. But regardless of the variety of subjects, Frasconi's style always emphasizes the look of the wood.

Look how the grain of the wood is visible in this piece. I love the interplay between the lines of the wood grain and the carved lines of the bricks. I love that Frasconi didn't try to hide the wood grain, or smooth it away, or fight it, but instead let it enrich the texture of the old building. A 1974 book of his work is called Against the Grain, but I don't think that's the right title at all. I know they were trying to be clever, but what I find so wonderful is how well Frasconi cooperates with the grain.

I think my favorite pieces by Frasconi are the architectural ones, (including the strangely beautiful oil rigs above). Something about his rough yet warm style seems really suited to capturing the geometry of human-built structures, yet imbuing them with a touch of life and humor that makes them seem truly human.

[Pictures: Offshore Oil, wood block print by Antonio Frasconi, 1953;

Frog from Bestiary/Bestiario by Pablo Neruda, wood block print by Frasconi, 1965;

Migration No.3, wood block print by Frasconi, 1959;

from The Fulton Fish Market, wood block print by Frasconi, 1953;

San Miniato, I and II, Firenze, wood block prints by Frasconi, 1967;

Portrait of Albert Einstein, wood block print by Frasconi, 1952.

(Several of these images were scanned from Frasconi: Against the Grain, Collier MacMillan Publishers, 1974.)]

Character Names in Fantasy

2011-09-06T13:53:00.000-04:00

The names of fictional characters are significant in all genres, and the best ones always help the reader form an impression of the character while still seeming right and natural. Names in fantasy, however, have an additional role. Because fantasy books have to immerse readers in entirely new universes, the names of fantasy characters have to tell the reader not only about the characters, but about their entire world. This is a heavy responsibility and leads to a lot of people having a bit of a love-hate relationship with fantasy names. Here are some of the issues…

Normal vs Strange - Unless the story is set on Earth, it doesn't really make sense that the characters would have normal Earth names (which in most fantasy written in English really means traditional European Earth names.) A wise old dwarf in some magical faraway land should not be called Jim. It would throw me out of the story. (I get the impression that Tolkien switched horses midstream on this one by claiming that Sam was really short for Samwise and Freddie's real name was Fredegar, and so on.) So unless they're set on Earth, fantasy names should be strange in order to give the reader clues about the strange world they're in. But…

Unfamiliar vs Confusing - We have no difficulty remembering long cast lists of characters with names that we recognize, but for some reason strange names, until they become familiar, just don't stick as well. Some fantasy writers try to get around this by using "normal" names with some sort of alternate spelling or twiddly ending. Personally, as a reader I tend not to like this. (Robert Jordan was particularly irritating in this respect.) The best names manage to be new and interesting, but enough unlike each other so as not to be too confusing. There shouldn't be dozens of names starting with the same letter or having the same shape. They should all be distinctly different. But…

Variety vs Ease - There are an infinite number of possible sound combinations, but only a very narrow selection of them that native speakers of English can handle. Readers don't like names that are too long or too hard to pronounce. But at the same time, when a book involves characters who are supposed to represent multiple cultures, yet their names all sound like the same language, the reader is getting mixed messages about the world. How different are the cultures really if they all speak the same language and all name their children from the same pool of possibilities? I admit that I may have an abnormal interest in those details. I majored in linguistics in college and have an enduring fascination with the broad range of possibilities within human languages. Different languages have different sets of vowels and consonants and different patterns of syllables, and of course different cultures have different naming conventions. In my Otherworld Series I've given each different culture a different set of phonetic rules for name-building, so that from a character's name you can tell where they come from. I think this is really cool - but the inevitable side effect is that I've been guilty of some names that are too long and/or too hard to pronounce. (One of the main characters of the third book Return to Tchrkkusk is Chlukash. The words and names of her people, the Tchrkkym, aren't really unpronounceable if you just remember that R and Y can be vowels, which is perfectly reasonable in several human languages, but just not English. Wouldn't it be a little strange if every language in the Otherworld built its words by the phonetic rules of English? And yet, of course, my readers are all readers of English.) The stranger the names are, the harder they are for readers to remember. And if readers can't remember which characters are which, they aren't going to enjoy the story as much.

Variety vs Cues - The rules of English words and names play out in another way, too. To speakers of English certain sounds have certain connotations. Some names sound rough, some sound sneaky, some sound light, some sound masculine, some sound feminine… Of course these sound associations are not universal and there's no reason that other languages of other peoples in other universes would share them. I get a little annoyed when too many female fantasy names end in -a or -i. (I even played with this idea a little in the fourth Otherworld book, Vision Revealed. The [female] hero is named Svarnil, but when she travels to Minaria, the people there keep trying to call her Svarnili, because otherwise it doesn't sound to them like a girl's name.) But however arbitrary such conventions are in reality, this is fantasy we're talking about. The point of making up names is to give the reader an experience of immersion in another time and place. Therefore too much "realism" is not helpful, but whatever linguistic cues the writer can give will add to the depth of the reader's experience. But then, this all has to be balanced back again, recognizable vs exotic…

All language is a balancing act between information and ease, and you can really see this principle at work in fantasy names. The speaker (or writer) wants to impart as much information as possible, but the hearer (or reader) doesn't want to have to work too hard to interpret all that information. If the writer tries to put in too much information, the reader gets bogged down. On the other hand, the writer wants to keep things efficient and simple, while the reader wants to be told the whole story. If the writer oversimplifies, the reader isn't satisfied. Names are so much more than just a tag or serial number. They evoke entire worlds. And that's the fun and frustration of fantasy names. Which fantasy names do you really love - or really hate?

[Picture: detail from Little Nut Tree (with name tags added), rubber block print by AEGN, 2005.]

Virtual Open Studio

2011-09-02T13:36:00.000-04:00

I just dropped off a few pieces for a group show leading up to Natick Artists Open Studios, and I've already started the first stages of work for Needham Open Studios. These days I'm doing four "Open Studios" per year... but not one of them is actually an open studio for me because I always opt to show in group space. However, I know that I am always curious to see other artists' work space so, in accordance with the Golden Rule, I thought I'd offer a Virtual Open Studio, showing where I work.

My studio is indeed a room of my own, for which I am very grateful. (Sometimes I feel a little pretentious calling it a "studio," but oh well.) Half the space is book-shelves, so the effective work area is all on one side of the room. This first view shows my main work table. In front of the table is the roller press that I never use. (It's

always more trouble than it's worth, alas.) The big shelf behind is where I store all sorts of random craft, sewing, and office supplies. (And the shelf above it is all the volumes of my journal.) I'm sorry to say that a lot of stuff also tends to pile up on the right end of my table, so that my work area decreases and decreases until I can't stand it any more and I clear every-thing off. Then as soon as I finish a project the piles start encroaching again.

The other view shows my computer desk, used for writing, of course, and all the photo-shopping, and web site work. To the left is a very nice cabinet saved from our old kitchen. That's where all my block printing supplies live. The top of it serves as a cutting table (but it, too, tends to get piled upon, making it a much smaller cutting space than it ought to be… And recently it has a layer of aluminum foil over the top all the time to keep our new cat from nesting up there.) To the left of that, on the edge of the picture, is my supply of mat board, covered in a dark blue blanket to protect it.
When I print an edition I lay the pieces out on the tops of everything to dry. I also have a nice shelf in the basement to keep the frames, print racks, the whole stock of matted prints, note cards, and books, etc. So I've really got a very sweet situation here… a far cry from the days when I worked on the only table and had to clear everything away whenever we wanted to eat a meal!

When P and T are home they're usually active in the next room, just beyond the mat board, which is why I can't write much while they're around. But the older they get the more work I can get done, and of course school's about to start again, so I'll have no more excuse to keep me from getting back to work. I'll be in this one small area for the majority of every day, having fun. I love my table and my art supplies. I love my computer. I love the sunlight coming in my windows. I love the view of the neighborhood. I love the birds that come to the bird feeders right outside. I love my studio!

[Pictures: photos by AEGN, 2011.]

Words of the Month - The Wandering N

2011-08-30T13:48:00.000-04:00

English retains an interesting variability in its indefinite article: "a pear" but "an apple." We used to have this -n form for possessives too, as in "Mine eyes have seen the glory…" But now we have no trouble saying "My eyes," and judging from the speech of my children, I'm sorry to say that we may be losing our a/an distinction, too. To my bafflement and dismay, P and T don't seem to have an as part of their active vocabulary.

Be that as it may, even if we eventually lose our pre-vowel variant for our indefinite article, it will still have left us with a legacy in the form of some of our nouns. See, an article and its following noun are usually pronounced run together as if they were all one word, and sometimes hearers parse the article/noun combination incorrectly. This is called "juncture loss."

Imagine that I were enthusiastically discoursing upon grammar (That shouldn't be too hard to imagine) and I kept mentioning something that sounded like "anarticle." If you were not a grammar aficionado you might not be sure whether I was talking about "an article" or "a narticle." If enough people misinterpreted the placement of the N, it could get attached to the wrong word and ultimately stick. This is called "metanalysis." (Remember that with Ns ending possessives, too, it would have been much rarer to hear the word in an unambiguous context. Keep in mind also that people spelled as they spoke, so there was no standardization in texts to reinforce the correct placement of the N.)

Here are some English words that have been struck by the Curse of the Wandering N. First, those that lost their N to the neighboring indefinite article:

adder was originally nadder, cognate with natrix, the Latin name for water snakes.

apron was originally napron, related to "napkin" and "napery."

umpire was originally noumpere, from French nonper, meaning one not equal.

orange came into English from the Spanish naranja, and misplaced its N on the way.

The N can wander the other direction, too. Here are a couple of words that gained their Ns from hanging out so often beside them.

I'll start with uncle, which was for a time interchangeable with nuncle, and shows up that way in Shakespeare about 10% of the time when brothers of parents are under discussion. However, the nuncle form has not stuck after all, so it doesn't fully count here.

nickname was originally ekename, meaning "extra name."

newt was originally ewte, and it's just a fabulous word either with the N or without.

[Picture: Newt, wood block print with multiple blocks by C.B. Falls, from ABC Book, 1923;

Newt Poster, linoleum block print with multiple blocks by Christopher Wormell for California Coastal Cleanup Day, 2004.]

Beasts at the Click of a Button

2011-08-26T15:56:00.001-04:00

I recently discovered several interesting on-line resources reproducing bestiaries. Bestiaries are, of course, collections of beasts, but the medieval ones that the word "bestiary" usually implies include not only natural history, but also all sorts of symbolism, moral lessons, and what we now believe to be sheer fairy tale. At the time there was no separation between science books and allegorical works, and nor were the "facts" ever checked with the modern scientific method. Bestiaries seldom involved original scholarship. Each one generally copied from previous texts. So bestiaries frequently include both real and fictional creatures, while the information about even the real animals includes all kinds of fantastical claims. This, of course, is half of what makes bestiaries so much fun.

The second half of the fun is the illustrations, sometimes whimsical, sometimes bizarre, sometimes beautiful, sometimes grotesque… The small paintings depicting the array of critters are often painstakingly done, but clearly owe more to imagination and convention than to direct observation.

Since bestiaries were made in the medieval period, (being especially popular around the twelfth century), it isn't too easy to get a chance to look at one. That's why I'm so excited to have discovered several sites where bestiaries have been digitized and made available for anyone with web access to enjoy at any time. Of course seeing art on the computer screen doesn't compare with seeing it in the original, but it sure beats not being able to see it at all!

First the Aberdeen Bestiary. This site includes the entire book, every page reproduced, with all kinds of information about what you're looking at. You can see details about how the book was made and illustrated and used, plus there are translations and commentary on the text, so you'll be sure not to miss any of the valuable information on the reproductive habits of hyenas or how to vanquish a basilisk.

The National Library of Medicine also offers some wonderful digital books, including a cool Islamic bestiary, The Wonders of Creation, from the mid thirteenth century. It has a very different selection of creatures from the western bestiaries, including the zodiac and lots of jinns and demons.

The National Library of Medicine also gives us Conrad Gesner's Historiae Animalium from 1551. This was a Renaissance attempt to bridge from the medieval bestiary to "modern" science, and while the scientific accuracy quotient of this book is a fair bit higher than earlier bestiaries, it still includes plenty of distinctly fantastical illustrations. Also, it's illustrated with woodcuts: Bonus! Double score!

The University of Houston Digital Library includes a wonderful collection of illustrations from Edward Topsell's History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents. This book was published in 1658 and was heavily based on Gesner's Historiae Animalium, but with lots of additional woodcuts. It often has two depictions of the same animal - what look to be older and newer versions.

Finally here's a really great site, The Medieval Bestiary, that includes images from several different manuscripts. There are good explanations, and you can sort by animal or by source. What a wealth of art and information!

[Pictures: Yale, paint on vellum from a French manuscript, c.1450, Museum Meermanno;

Dragon fighting an elephant, paint and gold on vellum from the Aberdeen Bestiary, c.1200;

Simurgh, paint on vellum from Kitab Aja’ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat aka The Wonders of Creation, mid-13th century;

Sea monster, woodcut from Historiae Animalium, 1551;

Su, woodcut from History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents, 1658 (Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries. UH Digital Library);

Dragon, paint on vellum from Deidis of Armorie, Scotland, late 15th century, British Library.]

Paul Landacre Wood Engravings

2011-08-23T09:04:00.002-04:00

Here are a couple of beautiful wood engravings by Paul Landacre (USA, 1893-1963.) They exemplify the very precise, formal carving style that made him famous. I find it a really interesting juxtaposition that he habitually used such a stark, mathematical style to portray organic, natural subjects. If you look at this shell closely, the entire thing is done with just one sort of line, but the density of the crosshatching varies subtly enough to give an incredible delicacy of shading. This piece is simultaneously realistic and abstract.

Landacre was largely self-taught, but seems to have had a driving ambition to master the craft and make it in the art world. He was especially known for scenes of the western US. Here's one I really love. I long to see this one in person and be able to examine the carving on that smoke tree. The different texture of the tree compared with all the straight lines of the mountains is very effective. He's made it absolutely luminous.

I'll definitely be keeping my eyes open for more of Landacre's work.

[Pictures: Shell, wood engraving by Paul Landacre, before 1935 (image from the Smithsonian American Art Museum);

Smoke Tree, wood engraving by Landacre, 1953.]