Life-Saving Relief Print

        Because this blog is devoted to the A-Z Challenge from Mid-March through the first post of May, no other topics get covered in that time, but now that the April A-Z is over it’s time to switch gears and go back and report on a few interesting things that are now about a month out of date.  I’ll start with a report on a school printmaking visit I did that introduced me to an amazing person and episode of history I had not been aware of.

        Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese vice consul in Lithuania in 1939-40, and went against his orders to give visas to as many people as he could who were fleeing the Nazi regime.  The details of all that he did are fascinating and inspiring - I encourage you to read the Wikipedia article.  Sugihara did everything he could to give out as many visas as possible, working up to 20 hours a day preparing papers, throwing stamped, signed papers from train windows into crowds of desperate refugees, and finally leaving the consulate seal itself behind when he was recalled to Japan, so that someone else could keep stamping forged papers.  He realized that his consular stamp literally had the power of life for people who would be killed if they couldn’t get away from the Nazis.  I like to talk big about how great printmaking is, and the power of art, but this particular relief printing block - the consulate seal - while of course never intended to be art, had a power much more immediate and stark than any mere picture.  Estimates are that Sugihara saved the lives of between 2,200 and 6,000 people (hard to pin down in part because multiple people in a family could travel under a single visa).

        So how does all this turn into a school art visit?  Well, an artist I know, Tova Speter, who specializes in community art projects, is doing an art installation at a local school, inspired by the story of Sugihara and his consulate seal.  Her idea was to have the eighth grade students make stamps representing some quality that they admired in Sugihara, then the stamps would be used to make a sort of mosaic, which is to be installed as a piece of art in the school.  (There is also to be an assembly at which the entire school community can stamp papers with the student designs.)  While Tova is something of a jack-of-all-trades, she recruited me to help with the printmaking part of the project, and we met with all the eighth grade students to help them carve their printing blocks.

        The down side was that the school was not able to give us enough time to do the stamp-making project optimally.  In order to be as efficient as possible, Tova had the kids start planning their designs ahead of time, and I cut 2 inch circles of rubber for everyone ahead of time, but even so, it was much more rushed than I would have liked, and a number of students weren’t able to finish.  Plus there were several students home sick on the day of carving.  I ended up finishing the carving for all of them.  (Normally as a teacher I make it a point never to do students’ artwork for them, even when they ask me to, but these were special circumstances: the students were never going to have another opportunity to complete their own carving, and it was deemed important that they nevertheless see their designs realized and made part of the final community project and installation.)  But the up side, of course, was some cool work by the kids!

        I’m not sure what stage the whole project has reached by this point, although I very much look forward to seeing pictures when the installation is complete.  In the meantime, though, I have been fascinated to think about the creativity with which Sugihara used his relief print to save so many people’s lives.

        Addendum: here's a link to Tova's description of the completed project.

[Pictures: Visa issued by consul Sugihara, 1940 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Assorted stamps designed by eighth grade students at Maimonides School, 2019.]