Hearth

HEARTH
Watercolor woodblock (moku hanga)
11 x 17 inches (28 x 43 cm)
Made from 6 blocks, 9 hand-rubbed applications of color
Edition of 10 on Yukimi paper
Based on five video stills of a fire burning in a fireplace.

Hearth has the word heart in it, and for many centuries (or maybe even forever) the cooking fire has been the heart of human life. It wasn't until 200 years ago that the open hearth was replaced by a fire in a "box," with a flat top and oven, and it was another 100 or so years before modern ranges, gas and then electric, became common. My own grandmother's electric range had a small attached wood stove that she used for heat and for warming food as late as the 1970s.

Lynn and I heated with wood for three years when we lived in Taos, New Mexico. It was messy and a lot of work, but I loved it. Chopping wood, hauling it into the house as needed, banking the coals overnight and then firing the stove back up in the morning — those rituals became embedded in our days and connected us to natural rhythms that you just don't experience when your "home fires" are unseen in the basement and you simply turn a dial to make heat. I recently read that watching a fire in a fireplace or fire pit lowers blood pressure, and the longer you watch the lower it goes, so who knows, maybe our love of hearth is biological.

If you've never seen Michael Pollan's series, "Cooked," it's pretty interesting. The first episode is about fire.