Daughter-in-Law C. Yoshida (and Granddaughter A.)

         I’m not finished with the Yoshida family yet.  Today I’m focusing on Hiroshi and Fujio’s daughter-in-law, wife of their younger son Hodaka.  Chizuko Yoshida (Japan, 1924-2017) joined three art associations when she was in her twenties.  One was a painting society founded by Hiroshi Yoshida, a second was a group for women oil painters founded by Fujio Yoshida, and the third was an avant-garde association in which Chizuko became interested in the push and pull between Western modernism and traditional Japanese aesthetics.  After she married Hodaka in 1953, around the time she was switching from painting to printmaking, she was influential in getting him involved in modernism, which also eventually influenced the work of Fujio and of Hodaka’s brother Tōshi.

        By way of choosing which pieces to share today, I wanted to post my favorites, but I also wanted to show the sweep of Chizuko’s various styles over time, which meant including some pieces I don’t actually care for.  So I’ve started with two pieces from the 1950’s, the first being one that I like a bit more, and the second being one that’s more representative of her early woodblock work, which tends to look to me like a lot of random stuff thrown together.

        Next, here’s a piece from the 1960s, during which Chizuko was doing a lot of work with embossing.  These don’t excite me, although I do feel the allure of embossing - especially since that’s one thing that rubber blocks and the back of a wooden spoon just can’t do.  You can see, though, that Chizuko was doing her own version of op art, which you can compare with some of the pieces I shared from her husband and her brother-in-law.

        These final two pieces date from the 1970s and are the ones I find most attractive.  I’m very partial to collections of natural forms that evoke both science and art.  However, to get that scientific detail of all different species of shells and butterflies, Chizuko used a combination of photoetching and woodblock printing, a combination Hodaka was also using extensively (although he was depicting primarily manmade, architectural images, rather than natural ones).  So even though I like these as art, I’m much less interested in them from a printmaking perspective, because photoetching sort of skips the actual physical creation part, which I love.  On the other hand, I wanted to include them as representative of some of Chizuko’s later work.  (Chizuko made a whole series of butterfly pieces over a long period, and I can certainly see why they’re popular.)  I also really like that today’s first piece and last piece, made more than 25 years apart, both represent blue butterflies.

        Finally, I want to include a piece by Chizuko and Hodaka’s daughter Ayomi Yoshida (Japan, b. 1958) who is also an artist.  Ayomi doesn’t get a whole post of her own because I don’t for the most part care for her work, (and later she also got into “deconstructing” block printing by making installations of blocks and chips, which interests me only to the extent that it irritates me as a waste of a wonderful medium!)  However, Ayomi certainly belongs in any discussion of this famous printmaking family, so I include one piece from 1989 that’s pretty cool.  All the gouges are pretty much the same - one tool, same direction, same size - but the arrangement and colors turn it into light on water.  You can see an op art influence in this, too.

        So, seven artists over 4 generations in one family - and each of them pushing and pulling to find their own voice and style.  It must be both encouraging and constraining to be surrounded by so much artistic inspiration, advice, support, and opinion.

[Pictures: Butterfly B, woodblock print by Chizuko Yoshida, 1953 (Image from Asian Art Museum);

Night in the Desert, woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1959 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Blue Line, woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1960s (Image from MFA Boston);

Reef, Shell C, photoetching and woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1976 (Image from The British Museum);

Valley of Butterflies, photoetching and woodblock print by C. Yoshida, 1979 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Touches 2W -C.V.B., woodblock print by Ayomi Yoshida, 1989 (Image from Art Institute Chicago).]

Little Brother H. Yoshida

         Today I’m back to the Yoshida family of artists to share some work by Hodaka Yoshida (Japan, 1926-1995).  As the second son, Hodaka was not expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and style.  Indeed, he was not supposed to be an artist at all - but he rebelled and became an artist, in a modernist and abstract style quite unlike the family tradition.  (To review what Hodaka wasn’t doing, you can check my post on Big Brother Tōshi Yoshida.)

        Hodaka began making woodblock prints in 1950, and an early example is this first one, which surprises me by how much I like it!  I especially like the way the colors layer.  It’s clearly a landscape of sorts, although obviously quite abstract.  Then in 1955 Hodaka encountered Pre-Columbian art, which inspired him to head in a whole new direction.  You can really see this in today’s second piece, which is very clearly copying Mayan motifs, but Hodaka also did lots of pieces that were influenced by this style without being so direct.  One example might be today’s fourth piece, made a few years later.

        At the same time, Hodaka was also experimenting with applying a graphic arts filter to more traditional subjects, such as this view of a teahouse, reduced to simplified geometric shapes arranged dramatically across the paper.  Three of the prints I’m sharing today (2,3, and 5) were all made in 1956, so it was apparently my favorite year in his work!

        In the 1960s Hodaka encountered pop art, and began experimenting with media such as silkscreen, photo-transfer, and collage.  Eventually in his later years he settled into a combination of wood blocks with photo-etching.  Art historians point to all this as new, edgy, important work, but as I have little interest in it, I’ll leave Hodaka there.

        In fact, I’ll finish up back in 1956 with this piece that may be my absolute favorite of his that I found.  Although it doesn’t look as Pre-Columbian as some of the others, the influence is right there in the title: “Ancient People, Maya.”  But whatever its inspiration, with its quilt-like mix of patterns, geometry, and softness, its soothing colors, and its interesting layering, I find this one deeply pleasing.

        A confluence of circumstances allowed and encouraged Hodaka to explore his own artistic direction.  In his childhood he was surrounded by artists but not expected to conform to them, then he launched his art career just as government control of the arts gave way to freedom.  He met and married another artist whose connections to avant-garde circles encouraged further experimentation.  (We’ll see what she was doing in the next post!)  In the end, Hodaka’s abstract work ended up influencing both his older brother Tōshi and his mother Fujio.

        What do you think?  Do you prefer the Yoshida family traditional work, or this more modern art?

[Pictures: Woods, color woodblock print by Hodaka Yoshida, 1954 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Crafty God, wood block print by Yoshida, 1956 (Image from Scholten Japanese Art);

Teahouse, wood block print by Yoshida, 1956 (Image from National Gallery of Art);

Ancestor, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1958 (Image from Scholten Japanese Art);

Ancient People, Maya, wood block print by Yoshida, 1956 (Image from Egenole Gallery).]

Big Brother T. Yoshida

         My last post was about the artist Fujio Yoshida, who was married to the artist Hiroshi Yoshida.  Today’s post will be about their elder son, Tōshi Yoshida (Japan, 1911-1995).  Tōshi’s artistic beginnings seem to have been influenced primarily by his grandmother, who encouraged him to draw animals, but eventually he was apprenticed in his father’s workshop.  This meant his job was to carry on the family’s artistic style, as defined by his father, rather than to follow his own preferences.  That he may not have been entirely happy with this is evidenced by the fact that as soon as Hiroshi died in 1950, Tōshi went off into a radically different style, highly stylized and even abstract.  However, eventually he worked the rebellion out of his system and returned to detailed realism, but with a focus on animals as subjects.  So after my cursory look at his biography and work, I see three phases in Tōshi’s woodblock prints.  Here are a couple of examples of each.

        First, the early work in which Tōshi followed in his father’s shin-hanga footsteps.  These two pieces are beautiful examples of the style that combines traditional Japanese woodblock techniques and sensibilities with western-art-trained perspective and light effects.  They are serene, meticulous, and controlled, which reflects the controlled environment in which they were made: not only a dutiful son, but living under a dictatorship that censored art.

        Second, the wild and crazy middle work beginning in the 1950s, in which Tōshi turned to  total abstraction, then also strange, stylized magical landscapes.  Many of his abstract works could be considered op art, before it had become a movement or the term was coined.  In this example the layers of finely carved lines create dazzling and disorienting interference patterns, while the central figures (which evoke early Chinese characters to my western eyes) provide a focus.  I like the landscapes even more, and this one evokes a huge mysterious monument towering over a desert outcropping.  This one begs for stories, while suggesting all the unknowns of lost civilizations and alien worlds.

        Third, the return to representationalism and the celebration of the animals Tōshi saw and loved on his extensive travels.  He particularly liked African animals, and many of his prints do include scenic backgrounds, but I chose this one for its drama.  You can see the meticulous realism combined with the use of those traditional Japanese printmaking techniques in the carving of the fur and the shading of the background.  And finally I include a very different example from Tōshi’s later prints because A) I think it’s just really cool, and B) I notice the way the sky echoes those op art lines from his abstract period while the silhouetted deer ground this scene in his return to realism.

        Tōshi Yoshida’s life looks to me like a trajectory of an artist struggling at times to find his own voice, while making absolutely stunning work at every step along the way.  Tune in next time to see some pieces by his little brother, whose artistic development followed a very different path.

[Pictures: Half Moon Bridge, woodblock print by Tōshi Yoshida, 1941 (Image from Fuji Arts);

Iidabashi, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1939 (Image from The British Museum);

Misty Dance, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1957 (Image from The British Museum);

Illusion, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1966 (Image from The British Museum);

Black Panther, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1987 (Image from Fuji Arts);

Mendocino, Sunrise, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1985 (Image from The British Museum).]

F. Yoshida's Flowers

         Fujio Yoshida (Japan, 1887-1987) came from a family of artists, but was the first woman in the family to work as an artist.  I saw a couple of her color woodblock prints of flowers at the Harvard Art Museums last year, and enjoyed them.  They obviously have a lot in common with the flower paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, with whom Yoshida was an almost exact contemporary.  I don’t know of any statement of direct influence, but given that Yoshida travelled to the United States for shows at just around the time O’Keeffe was exhibiting her earliest enlarged flower paintings, it seems very likely that Yoshida would be aware of them.  However, it was not until 1949 that Yoshida began making her own abstract flower paintings, for which she would place flowers inside a glass fishbowl in order to magnify them.

        The woodblock prints came in 1953.  These pieces are certainly not as large as O’Keeffe’s canvases, but they are larger than life, and share the same sense of abstraction.  At first glance they could be purely abstract, but then you can see how they’re actually zoomed-in views.  It’s interesting to see the traditional Japanese printmaking methods used for such a different style of art.

        I don’t like the dull colors of this narcissus as much, but I do appreciate that it’s an interesting choice, especially compared to the particularly bright greens of the ladyslipper orchid.  I also like that Yoshida has chosen to show the flower from the back, rather than the stereotypical front view.

        I’ve featured woodblock prints by some other member of the Yoshida family in previous posts.  You can see a street scene by her husband Hiroshi here.  Hiroshi had been adopted by her father to be the successor of the family’s art tradition, because of course it couldn’t be a girl.  But after her father died Hiroshi enrolled her in art school and they held joint exhibitions together.  You can see one of his Sailboats here, and Garden in Summer here.  The couple had two sons, both of whom also became artists.  You can see a strange alien city by Tōshi Yoshida here.

        As for Fujio herself, I like how different these flower details are from anything her artistic father or husband had done, although her second son’s abstract work was apparently an influence on her.  Anyway, I love O’Keefe’s flowers, and I like these, as well.

[Pictures: Ladyslipper Orchid, woodblock print by Fujio Yoshida, 1954;

Flowering Kale, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1953;

Narcissus, woodblock print by Yoshida, 1954 (All images from Harvard Art Museums).]

The Range of Gibbings

         Robert Gibbings (Ireland, 1889-1958) was very influential in reviving wood engraving as an artistic medium in the twentieth century.  He worked as an illustrator, author, and publisher, so he was instrumental in defining how relief printing was used throughout a formative period of twentieth century art and design.  The thing about his work that strikes me is the variety of styles he uses over the course of his career.  Early on he was influenced by cubism and modernism, which you can see in this most excellent castle.  There’s definitely something cubist about the perspective and the shading of the blocks that make up the architecture.

        He also developed something he called a “vanishing line” technique, in which many edges and outlines are missing.  This is a style that fascinates me, in large part because I find myself utterly unable to do it.  It requires far more faith in one’s own artistic ability, in the possibilities of graphic design, and in the eyes of the beholder than I have ever been able to summon.  This woman is certainly not the most extreme example, but it’s one of my favorites.  Is she contemplating the next move in a chess game, or is she staring at some other sort of “Problem” to be solved?  With so many details elided I can’t tell for sure, but it’s amazing to me how much we do see in this image, even though it isn’t really there: the whole shape of the woman’s head and body.

        By contrast, this scene of a mill is quite realistic, without any hint of cubism.  Nevertheless, you can see Gibbings’s ability to leave out a lot of details and outlines.  I particularly love how the smaller branches of the trees are dashed lines, and the shaded area between the two wings of the mill is entirely black.  I admire how little carving it takes to pick out an entire scene in small details of white, and I love the serenity of a place that’s been conjured out of so little.

        This last piece is from much later in Gibbings’s career, and by now his style is full of fine textures and little details for an entirely different look.  He was particularly successful writing and illustrating travel memoirs, and this detailed style served well to share scenes from his travels all around the world.  (All this travel was possible because he wasn’t much concerned with family responsibility!  But for today I’m just here to share the relief prints.)

        I’ve featured a few other pieces by Gibbings in past posts, and it’s well worth revisiting Sea Creatures, Under Snow, and Year of the Snake to see more pieces that demonstrate the wide range of styles that strikes me so much about his work.

[Pictures: Castle at Saumur, wood engraving by Robert Gibbings, c. 1925 (Image from V&A);

The Problem, woodcut by Gibbings, 1921 (Image from V&A);

The Mill, wood engraving by Gibbings, 1920s (Image from V&A);

Standing Stones, wood engraving by Gibbings, 1951 (Image from V&A).]

Keeping Cool

         It’s time for some seasonal block prints, and this time I’m sharing some pieces in which artists have tried to capture the summer joy of trying to stay cool.  Spanning different eras and places, some things are very different, while other things are universal.

        Going chronologically, I’ll start with a wood block print from about 1715 in Japan.  People lounge about on a boat and by the water, no doubt hoping for a cooling breeze.  One woman holds a fan.  The man on top of the boat has bared some skin, but most of the other people look awfully bundled up.  The sunset colors, which are painted onto the single-block print, make the whole scene look quite oppressively sultry, and even the tree looks wilted.  The people on

the boat don’t look very happy.  All of which makes me not particularly enjoy this piece, but it’s interesting to see something 300 years old, and yet other than the heavy formal clothing, it could be today.

        Jumping to 1897, we still have a woman wearing layers of petticoats, long sleeves, and long gloves at the height of summer.  No wonder she’s enjoying her iced drink in the shade.  This print involves three blocks with three colors, but all of the colors are somewhat pale and dull, perhaps emphasizing the heat, and once again suggesting late afternoon.  This woman is certainly fashionable, with the better part of two whole dead birds on her hat, and the composition of the piece puts us in the position of someone joining her at her small table in the park.  I especially like the spare but effective lines delineating the fabric of her dress, and the clouds in the sky.

        Not until 1967 do we see people taking off all the extra layers of fashionable clothing.  Now they’re all in bathing suits on the shore of Lake Michigan.  Sailboats are offshore, some people are swimming while others play ball, or simply sunbathe.  The rough style doesn’t give nearly as much detail to the fashions, but I can definitely see a 60’s vibe in the styles of the bikinis!  Nevertheless, this is a summer scene we can certainly recognize as modern.

        This last piece, from the 21st century, is the first one that really looks cool, with its fountains of blue water.  Instead of the lassitude of sweltering heat, this woman is full of energy - that water may actually be cold!  I love her exuberant pose, hands up, braids flying, as she leaps among the sprays of water.  Truth be told, it has to be very hot indeed before I actually want to get into cold water - that second woman with her drink in the park is more likely to be my summer strategy of choice - but this final block print absolutely looks like the most fun.

        Enjoy some other scenes of summer at prior posts Summer Days, Summer Nights, and When the Living is Easy.

         What’s your favorite way to keep cool when the temperature soars?

[Pictures: Cooling Off on a Summer Evening, hand-colored woodblock print by Okumura Masanobu, c. 1715 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Paris Almanac: Summer, wood engraving by Auguste Louis Lepère, 1897 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

Chicago Riviera, woodcut by Bronislaw M. Bak, 1967 (Image from Art Institute of Chicago);

Seasonal illustration by Kari Percival (Image from karipercival.com).]

City Scenes by Troy

         Today’s block prints are by Adrian Troy (UK/USA, 1901-1977).  I could find little biography for him, other than that he was born in England, went to high school in France, made prints for the WPA in the US, and taught wood engraving in Chicago.  Of course I’d like to know a little more about him, but as usual in these cases, I just have to look at the art on its own.  This first piece is the one that got me interested in Troy, and it’s my favorite that I’ve found.  I love the interesting perspective, as if perhaps we’re in an upper story of the building across the street.  I love the slightly wobbly lines of the architecture, making the whole thing quirky and whimsical.  There are also all kinds of hints at untold stories here: the building is quite fancy with a pediment and a name, and handsome architectural details around the windows, but it has a “For Rent” sign as if perhaps it’s come down in the world.  The two people calling back and forth to each other from the street to the third floor must have something going on between them.  The shadow across the front of the building and in the alley by the fire hydrant hint of further atmosphere.

        Next is a busy scene of a produce market.  There are men with trucks and barrows, women and children, a garage and gas pump, warehouses and crates, trash cans and a trolley car…  There’s some interesting stuff going on with the view, like the juxtaposition of different perspectives as if this is more of a montage of scenes than a single view.  There’s also a sort of cutaway on the Garage roof, so that we can see the trucks parked inside.  This simultaneously seems like a very real and specific place (“South State St. Market” at the corner of S. State St. and 69th St.), while also being an impressionistic version of it.

        The final piece shows bricklayers at work for a WPA project, and it comes from a series on road-building.  I don’t quite like how very blank the men’s faces are, but I love everything else, from the balance of black-white-and-texture, to the details of the manhole cover and the tools, to the positions and jackets of the workers.  I also really love the mini silhouette view and carved title at the bottom.

        All of these scenes have such specificity that they must be real places.  The info given with the scene of the market does say it’s in Chicago, so my assumption is that the others are, as well.

        For some additional related block print viewing pleasure, if you want an overview of the WPA program, read my post WPA Printmaking.  If you like the busy cityscape of the second piece, check out Christopher Hutsul’s Cityscapes.  If you want to see a couple different examples of block prints that play with perspective to combine more views into a single scene, try Leopoldo Méndez at Working, and Gwenda Morgan at Morgan’s World.

[Pictures: 4117 Wentworth Avenue, woodcut by Adrian Troy, 1935/42 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

The Produce Market/South State Street Market, woodcut by Troy, 1935/40 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Brick-Laying, woodcut by Adrian Troy, 1935/37 (Image from Art Institute Chicago).]

The Fire of Independence

         Twelve score and nine years ago there was brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great struggle, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.  It certainly makes Independence Day this year feel simultaneously cruelly ironic as well as poignantly precious.  But in this blog I look at everything through the lens of block prints, so here’s what I’ve got…

        Howard Cook (USA, 1901-1980) made two versions of his linoleum cut celebrating July Fourth.  Children dance and scamper about among fireworks and sparklers, but one version includes four colors ranging from yellow, through orange, into brown, while the second version is just the single darkest layer, this time printed in black.  (It could be a reduction print, such that the black and white version is all that’s left of the block by the time the other successive layers have been carved away, but it’s also possible that they’re separate blocks.)  At any rate, what I love about the color version is that the children hold stars in their hands, which is such a beautiful image.  On the other hand, I confess that so much fiery color right there on the ground around the children feels scary to me.  Even though you can actually see the smiles on a couple of the faces, my mind all too easily leaps to bombs and disaster.  In that regard the black and white version seems a little less intense, since the fireworks appear to be a little more up in the sky.

        I also wanted to include this wonderful Japanese wood block print that isn’t about the United States holiday at all.  It’s by Gakutei (Japan, 1786?-1868) and shows the Tenjin Festival in Osaka, which is held on July 24-25.  This wood block print also includes people gathered to celebrate with fire and lights, parades and festivities, and it evokes much of the feel of July Fourth for me.  Including it here today also speaks to my strong belief that the United States has grown and improved in the past 250 years precisely to the extent that it has expanded its view of who is actually embraced by that promise that everyone is endowed with the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  When we refuse to see the contributions of some, we deny ourselves our greatest strength, and when we roll back liberty and justice for some, we destroy the very foundations that I, for one, will be celebrating this week as I watch the fireworks with my neighbors from all different backgrounds, each of whom brings something important to my community.

[Pictures: July Fourth, linoleum cuts by Howard Cook, 1950 (Images from Smithsonian American Art Museum);

The Tenman Shrine Festival in Osaka, color woodcut by Gakutei, c. 1833-4 (Image from Philadelphia Museum of Art.]

Pollinator Week

         It’s Pollinator Week, so let’s celebrate with block prints of some of our world’s wonderful pollinators.  I’ll start right off with a bang with this beautiful, bright image of a variety of bees and butterflies visiting a variety of flowers.  This piece by Kate Heiss took seven blocks and is full of summery color.  Butterflies are particularly beloved, being beautiful and gentle.  They are often considered symbolic of the soul and of rebirth.  How fitting, then, that their pollination helps ensure the rebirth of the plants they visit.  If you want to support butterflies, you should grow not only the flowers they pollinate, but also the plants on which they lay their eggs (such as milkweed for monarchs.)

        Another piece by Heiss, using only one block, shows a wonderful graphic quality.  This one reminds us of the incredible importance of bees for pollination.  It shows sunflowers (with wonderful patterns) in the foreground, while the background shows a cultivated field.  Scientists estimate that about a third of the food we eat (as many as three quarters of the different crop species) are dependent on pollination by bees.  So yes, you should be concerned that many species of bees are in serious decline.  Please lay off the pesticides in your yard, for the sake of bees, butterflies, and other pollinators - and for the sake of the humans who like

to eat the food they pollinate!

        Up next is a pollinator from the Americas that everyone loves: the hummingbird.  Each block of this two-block linocut by Alynn Guerra is printed with a color gradation for a fiery red palette that any hummingbird would love.  Where I live we get only one species of hummingbird, and they always seem like a wonderful gift.  Where there are many species you can see the evidence of co-evolution between the flowers and the hummingbirds’ bills.

        A less well-known pollinator is the bat, mostly the fruit-eating bats of tropical and desert areas.  (All the bats in my area are insect-eaters.)  Still, over 500 species of plants rely on bats, including bananas and mangos, so don’t underestimate their services to flowering plants.  Here’s a two-layer reduction linocut by Emīls Salmiņš, showing three bats feasting on the berries that probably wouldn’t even be there without the bats’ pollination.

        And finally, here’s one of my own rubber block prints, featuring another night-time pollinator: the moth.  A study in 2023 found that moths were actually more efficient pollinators than bees, carrying more pollen, and visiting a wider variety of species.  On the other hand, they pollinate fewer vital food crops.  A number of our beloved flowers are pollinated by moths, though, including morning glories, honeysuckle, monarda, and evening primrose.

        In addition, wasps, flies, beetles, other birds, and small mammals can also provide flowering plants with that vital pollination.  Never forget that nature is a wildly complex, interconnected, finely tuned machine, and every time we mess up part of it (like using all those pesticides on foods crops - or your lawn), we cause unintended and sometimes disastrous consequences.  Pollinator Week is a reminder that we need to protect these creatures, both the beautiful beloved ones and the less flashy ones.  And of course it’s also a good excuse for block prints.  (To see the collection of pollinators I posted way back in 2013, see that Pollinator Week post.)

[Pictures: Poppies and Pollinators, linocut by Kate Heiss (Image from VK Gallery);

Sunflower and Bees, linocut by Heiss (Image from VK Gallery);

Hummingbird, linocut print by Alynn Guerra (Image from Red Hydrant Press);

Bats, linocut reduction print by Emīls Salmiņš (Image from Two Lovers Printmaking);

Wee Hours, rubber block print by AEGNydam (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

Distant Stars

         Here’s my most recent block print, an epic one by my standards, as it's very nearly the full size of the rubber blocks that I use (18x12 inches) and therefore as big as I can ever go.  (It is cut down slightly just to make it fit well into a standard size frame.)  The process was not too unusual, and indeed the star areas with white carved into black actually go very quickly, despite all the words.  On the other hand, carving black words on a white background, as in the title, is much more difficult.  Also, I tried a few experiments with pressing instead of carving: the circles and diamonds in the border were pressed with small bits of metal tubing.  The stars were also pressed in with a couple of different sizes of phillips screwdrivers.

        Because people always ask me how long it takes to make a print, I once again tried to keep track of my time.  The end result was about 17 and a half hours, including 3 hours to draw the design, 12 and a half hours of carving, and 2 hours of printing.  I have not yet matted or framed any, which will of course take more time.  Generally I never worked for more than an hour at a time, although I might carve for a few sessions in one day.  This was spread out over many days - even longer because the block was too big to bring with me to carve during art shows last month, so there was a bit of a hiatus while I worked on smaller pieces.

        The idea for this block had been floating around in my head for some time, because I’ve always thought the constellations are so random.  I thought it would be fun and funny to make up a batch of constellations highlighting the crazy selection of pictures people could claim to see in the stars of some alien fantasy world.  I brainstormed lots of possible constellations, but the ones I ended up including are

     The Kiwi - Because I love kiwis!

     The Dirigible - Maybe a common form of transportation for these people

     The Guppy - Not all constellations are large and complex

     The Silverfish - I was trying to think of something utterly random and not usually considered to be worth the stellar treatment

     The Polypodrollery - An inside joke; this is one of the malacomorphs I invented in a little block print, for inclusion in my book On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination

     The Salad Fork - I was amused by the specificity: it’s not just any fork

     The Five Socks - Does this world have 5-footed people, or 6-footed people missing a sock, or bipedal people missing one sock out of 3 pairs?  Presumably there’s a myth that explains this.

     The Glekprunk - I found this creature in the Luttrell Psalter, a manuscript from 1325-1340.  Because it’s a marginal doodle, I had to make up a name for it.  (Prunk is German for “magnificence.”)

     The Starnose Mole - What more appropriate creature to be a constellation?

     The Teapot - People born under the sign of the celestial Teapot are warm and inviting, but can be quick-tempered.

     The Diploceraspis - This is (or was, anyway) one of those real creatures that seems as strange as any fantasy beast.  Perhaps in this world they’re still around.

     The Crwth - An intrinsically funny word in English

        Having decided on my constellations, I also had to figure out how to fill the corners of my star chart.  Many of the fancy renaissance star charts feature decorative scenes in the four corners, and they’re often scenes from mythology.  Obviously my distant world needed its own mythology, so I depicted Night weaving a starry blanket for her daughter the Moon.  (I also wrote a poem about this, which will no doubt be shared in due course.)  In the lower corners I put philosopher-astronomers’ towers for their observations.  These are more-or-less copied from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), but with the telescopes added.  The sun is also adapted from a renaissance woodcut.

        Of course, since the people who view this sky aren’t Romans with Roman mythology, they obviously wouldn’t speak Latin, let alone English, but since I wanted people in our world to be able to read the captions, I had to put them “in translation.”  Therefore I went with English for the constellation names for maximum comprehension, and Latin for the title cartouche for maximum fancy learnedness.

        All those little words aren’t ever as perfectly carved as I would like, and I didn’t notice until after I’d printed the whole batch that it’s missing the little connecting spots in the lower right corner of the border.  Despite my measuring and drawing guidelines, the border elements are pretty wonky, and I accidently carved away a border line from the left edge of the title cartouche.  I probably should have added a lot more stars, and the experiment with the phillips screwdrivers  did not make as clear an X as I had hoped.  So many imperfections!  And yet on the whole I’m pretty pleased with it.  I hope it pleases the imagination of others, too.

[Picture: Distant Stars, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com.)]