Class Picture

Still working on the introductory section of my book God Is Our Witness -- the loneliness and alienation chapter. My own loneliness as a child was partly nature, as I'm an introvert, but also nurture in that I grew up living on the grounds of a state-operated school for delinquent girls. Nobody wants to live next door to what is basically a prison for children, so the facility was located in a remote / rural area in upstate New York. My father was the director of the school, and both my parents were trained social workers. They knew that my sister and I could easily become "institutionalized," so they made every effort to take us to events, play dates, etcetera, but I always felt jealous of kids who lived in actual neighborhoods and could just walk out their door and find playmates.



I was not as moody and glum as the child I've pictured here, but I think many LGBTQ youth can identify with this feeling.

Technically, this is a simple print. I used two blocks, one for the background and one reduction block for the child, and just four color applications.

Next there will be a couple of transitional prints leading into a new section of the book.

Hell Is Not Hot

In case you haven’t been following along with my latest posts, I’m working on a series of prints that will be bound into a book, called God Is Our Witness. Although a lot of my work is loosely narrative, it’s different to work with an actual book in mind. I have only a vague outline as I proceed, and I know already that some of the prints I’ve made since January will not actually make it into the book. But I’m just going along with the flow as it appears to me and I’m looking forward to being surprised by the ending.







These three prints were made as a group. If you look closely you can see that the background and snow pattern are the same in each print. I made 24 impressions of the basic background, then made 3 different versions of forest and figure combinations. These three prints will be scattered throughout the first section/chapter of the book, which is basically focused on alienation and loneliness.

My mother made a comment to me the other day expressing worry that I'm working with this topic, dredging up old pains and sorrows. I understand her concern, and in fact it hasn't always been comfortable for me, but as we all know, the story of being gay in America at the turn of the 21st century is an “It Gets Better” story. You can’t tell an “It Gets Better” story without the bad part or else there’s nothing to get better.

Dear Mr. Falwell

Partial transcript of comments from the
September 13, 2001 telecast of The 700 Club

JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters -- the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats -- what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact -- if, in fact -- God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
______________________

It’s easy to say hey, these guys are extremists, they’re nuts, just ignore them. But both Jerry Falwell, who founded The Moral Majority in 1979, and Pat Robertson, who ran for the presidency in 1988, were extremely influential in late 20th century politics and, as it happens, I am a late 20th century lesbian. I remember Jerry Falwell as a loud and powerful anti-gay voice at a time when gay people were barely able to be public without getting fired or beaten up. The year I came out, 1977, Falwell declared war on LGBT people when he joined Anita Bryant’s anti-gay Save Our Children Campaign in Florida and he kept that war going right up until his death exactly 30 years later. Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said it well in an interview with CNN in 2007:

Unfortunately, we will always remember him as a founder and leader of America’s anti-gay industry, someone who exacerbated the nation’s appalling response to the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic, someone who demonized and vilified us for political gain and someone who used religion to divide rather than unite our nation.

On a positive note, I guess I can credit Falwell for politicizing people like me who never cared much about politics until we were under political attack.

Last month I was cleaning out some files and I came across a printout of an email that I sent to Falwell on September 15, 2001, after I heard the 9/11 remarks quoted above. I had forgotten about it, but the memories came back to me as I read it. When I heard Falwell’s remarks on September 14, the day after he made them, I was furious. For over two decades this man had been blaming gay people for anything and everything wrong with America. It was a last straw for me. There I was, reeling in the aftermath of the terrorist attack just like every other American, and this man with a microphone blames it on me? All my history with him and his ilk came crashing down on me in that moment. I was livid. There was no way that I was going to let him strip me of my citizenship, turn me into an ‘other,’ take away my feeling of solidarity with my country or my world. All these memories flooded me when I found this 12-year-old email, and in a fit of resolve I decided to reproduce it as a woodcut.







It sounds kind of corny to me now, but I remember that it felt fabulous to write it. I was ‘born again’ in high school, so I have no fear about speaking for God right back at someone who thinks that they know God’s mind. I’m very clear that I have just as much authority to speak for God as Jerry Falwell ever had. I doubt that Falwell actually read my email, but I thoroughly enjoyed the quixotic task of carving these words into a piece of wood and printing them with sumi ink.

Unintentionally, and unfortunately, I write this post two days after the bombing at the Boston Marathon. What I wrote in 2001 is still true for me: “God loves every wild and incomprehensible and tender and vulnerable and beautiful and horrible bit of this world.” How do I know this?  I know this because that’s what I love, and God and I are the same.

The Lorraine Motel

THE LORRAINE
Japanese-method woodblock (moku hanga)
Paper size: 13" x 9.5" (33 x 24 cm)
Paper: Echizen kozo
Made with 3 shina plywood blocks, 9 color layers
Edition: 20
__________________________________

Forty five years ago today, Martin Luther King was shot and killed on a balcony at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had come to show support for black sanitary public works employees who were on strike. The room where King was staying has been memorialized since 1968, and in the 1990s the Lorraine was converted into The National Civil Rights Museum. I've never been to the museum, but they seem to have permanent exhibits as well as rotating special exhibits. I worked from a photograph for this print and I left the “E” off the word “violence” just as it appears in the photograph. My impression is that the National Civil Rights Museum works on a pretty low budget and I like the way the absence of the letter shows that.

… if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" ...Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy."

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

And so I'm happy, tonight.
I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man!
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

- Martin Luther King Jr., the night before he was killed at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis.

Sosaku Hanga - Koshiro Onchi

This is the second article in a series about the artists of the sosaku hanga (creative prints) movement which took place in Japan during the early-to-mid 20th century. Artists involved in this movement held to the idea that for a woodblock print to be considered “art” rather than a commercial print, each step (design, carving, and printing) needed to be carried out solely by the artist rather than by separate artisans.

According to Oliver Statler, Koshiro Onchi (1891-1955) could be called a rebel. Raised in a conservative upper class family who expected him to be a doctor, Onchi rebelled by entering art school. His approach in art school was to do whatever he wanted, and he was subsequently invited to leave. Once on his own, Onchi continued his rebellion by abandoning the oil painting he had studied and, influenced by both Yamamoto and the work of Europeans like Kandinsky and Munch, he threw his oppositional energy into the sosaku hanga movement. Hanga was a perfect art form for Onchi's fighting spirit, as the Japanese art world of the time was strongly against accepting hanga in shows and competitions. 

Book cover design by Koshiro Onchi

Like most of the sosaku artists, Onchi supported himself by doing commercial work. He had studied calligraphy in his youth, and after art school he got involved in magazine and book design, with a special interest in art and literary magazines. By the mid-1920s he came to be known as one of Japan's foremost book designers.

There are several good online articles about Onchi. My friend Gerrie did a nice overview last fall on the Linosaurus blog, and there's a lot of good biographical information on the Lavenberg Collection web site. As a mokuhanga printmaker, my main interests for this post are Onchi's techniques and his thoughts about hanga. 

One of the first things I notice about Onchi's style is that it's all over the place. He could render figurative prints in great and gorgeous detail, as you can see from the following example.

 

Koshiro Onchi: Portrait of poet Hagiwara Sakutaro

I can barely believe that this portrait is a woodblock print, but it is. Onchi was clearly capable of beautiful draftsmanship and careful printing. 

Koshiro Onchi, Among the Rocks

And yet, his representational prints are often somewhat crude and messily printed. Look especially at the margins in the examples below, both of which come from a subscription series of prints made between 1928 and 1932 called 100 Views of New Tokyo.

I'm fascinated by the sloppiness, probably because I find it difficult to allow my own work to be sloppy, so I'm jealous of Onchi's cavalier attitude. 

Koshiro Onchi, Inukoshiro Park

Elise Grilli, a mid-century art critic for the Nippon Times, wrote about Onchi's feeling about craft in the following way. “Onchi delighted in flaunting the conventions of ukiyoe prints. The meticulous craftsmanship, the virtuosity of line, the hair-raisingly painstaking printing from twenty or thirty separate blocks, the finicky precision in overlapping the colors, and, in recent times, the overwhelming cleverness in naturalistic representation—all this he threw out the window with a single toss and a hearty laugh.”

Koshiro Onchi, from a print portfolio, 1930

 

Koshiro Onchi, 1946

 Yet Onchi's own words about hanga seem to contradict this anti-craft attitude. In his book The Modern Hanga of Japan he writes, “The virtue of hanga lies in the certainty that it comes from a creative process which permits no sham. Unlike brush painting, it allows no wavering of the hand. It is honest—sham and errors show. Some liberty may be allowed in the registry but so little that it, like the carving, is a process which permits no delusion…hanga rejects the accidental and rejects ornamentation…and it contains the most constructive process in graphic art, the advantage of superimposing pictures. For this reason, hanga is probably the most suitable method yet found for the expression of modern art, which lays stress on construction.”

Onchi came to believe that hanga was uniquely suited for abstract art, and as time went on he moved more and more in that direction. In his abstract work, Onchi was relentlessly experimental, constantly trying new techniques and materials. In addition to wood blocks, he printed with paper, cardboard, string, objects, leaves — anything that caught his imagination.

 

Koshiro Onchi, Leaf and Clouds, 1953

The forms in the print above, Leaf and Clouds, were cut from waxed paper. For each impression he brushed the waxed paper form with regular sumi ink and some nori, putting most of the ink near the edges, then laid the form onto a piece of glass with the inked side down. The printing paper was placed on top of that and he used his baren as usual, allowing the ink to ooze out from under the waxed paper. The leaf shape was printed from a leaf.

Onchi's portfolio prints were printed in larger editions, but many of his abstract prints were done in very small editions of 5 or fewer, making them more like paintings than prints. I can relate to not wanting to make big editions. 

I'm not so crazy about Onchi's abstracts, but I enjoy his figurative work and I love his rebellious and experimental spirit. 

Sosaku Hanga - Kanae Yamamoto

Yamamoto, from "Modern Japanese Prints"

This post is the first in a series about the artists of the sosaku hanga (creative prints) movement which took place in Japan during the early-to-mid 20th century. Artists involved in this movement held to the idea that for a woodblock print to be considered “art” rather than a commercial print, each step (design, carving, and printing) needed to be carried out solely by the artist rather than by separate artisans.

[Note added 3/24/2013: My friend Gerrie at The Linosaurus blog wrote an interesting post about Kanae Yamamoto last year, including research into his relationship to the French impressionists of his time.]

Kanae Yamamoto (1882-1946) is often called the founder of sosaku hanga. At age 11, he was apprenticed to a wood engraver and after his apprenticeship he worked as a newspaper engraver/illustrator. At age 21 he entered art school and in 1904 he made what is considered the first sosaku hanga print, called Fisherman. By the time he graduated from art school, Yamamoto was deeply excited about creative woodprints and he became an influence on many other artists.

Fisherman by Kanae Yamamoto

As you can see, this two-color print is carved in the style of an engraving although, unlike an engraving, it was made on a plank board and the chisel marks are fairly loose. At the time the print was published in a Tokyo magazine, it was labeled as a toga, literally a “knife picture.” I kind of like that term.

In 1912 Yamamoto went to Europe for several years and further developed his style, which became looser and more oriented toward the u-gouge like the German expressionists. The chisel marks are what stand out to me in these prints, as well as the European subject matter.

Kanae Yamamoto, Bathing in Brittany

Kanae Yamamoto, Cow

Kanae Yamamoto, Dutch Girl In Landscape

Kanae Yamamoto, French Pastoral In Spring

Kanae Yamamoto, Woman of Brittany

Kanae Yamamoto, On the Deck

Once back in Japan, Yamamoto started a sosaku hanga organization which lasted many decades, and he also started and ran an arts and crafts school in the mountains of Nagano Prefecture. The school, which took Yamamoto away from pursuit of his own art, was never a great success, but it birthed another movement in Japan called the "Free Drawing" movement. This movement in childhood education argued against the old copying method of learning to draw and encouraged freedom and creativity in children's expression. After the school failed, Yamamoto returned to Tokyo determined to take up his own artistic practice again, but he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage shortly afterward and died in 1946 at the age of 64. Before his death, Yamamoto got out of bed and took a hatchet to his wood blocks. As Oliver Statler writes, "For a man who believed so deeply in creative prints it must have been anathema that somebody else might print from his blocks."

Kanae Yamamoto, Fishermen

Sosaku Hanga - Part 1

Back in 2005 when I first started making Japanese style woodblock prints, I took a trip to Japan and while I was there I saw an exhibition called “The Warmth of Woodblock Prints” which featured prints from the sosaku hanga (creative prints) movement of mid-20th century Japan. There were over 150 gorgeous prints and I spent hours there.

A few months later, Australian woodblock artist Tom Kristensen told me about a book called Modern Japanese Prints: An Art Reborn by Oliver Statler which charts the history of the sosaku hanga movement. The book, which is now out of print, was written in 1959, a time when the movement was still developing and when it had few advocates even in Japan, and it is notable for the intimacy of the interviews that Statler conducted with over 25 sosaku hanga artists, often in their studios and homes. I immediately bought a copy and read it cover to cover.

My recent visit to Smith College’s “Collecting the Art of Asia” exhibition where I saw a number of sosaku hanga works reminded me of Statler's book, so I picked it back up again this week and have started reading it for a second time. What I find these 8 years later is that the book has much more meaning to me now that I have more experience with the techniques of Japanese woodblock printmaking. So I plan to do a series of blog posts about some of these artists as I go through the book again. In the next post I’ll begin with Kanae Yamamoto who is often called the founder of sosaku hanga.