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QUEST: 1,000 Woodcuts Update
Fall 2002 -  165 completed
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I'm heading off into the sunset looking forward to a busy season, although I'm more looking forward to getting out of the Vegas heat for a little while. Oh, and I'm going East, so I guess that's not the sunset either. Anyhow...
A busy season of art festivals this Fall:
http://www.1000woodcuts.com/exhibits/exhibit.html

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New Stuff:
It is customary for printmakers to exchange prints. Thanks to the wonders of the web, I'm amassing a collection of prints from all over the world. What fun! This print was done for an exchange under the theme of War and/or Peace:
http://www.1000woodcuts.com/fullsize/oneworld.html

More on the life of a Tree series...I only have one more carved and ready to print. The complete series is 8, but there are two more blocks of wood that are calling my name, so who knows?
http://www.1000woodcuts.com/WoodEngravings/engrave2.html

And finally, some quick "sketches" about water in the desert. I guess it was a particularly hot festival that got me thinking about water:
http://www.1000woodcuts.com/fullsize/waterindesert.html

Quotes and Diary entries:
http://www.1000woodcuts.com/1000woodcuts/quotes.html
http://www.1000woodcuts.com/1000woodcuts/diary.html

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Thoughts and Ramblings
I know that summer isn’t quite over yet for some of you, but mine is coming to a close with my first show of the fall season, the Main Street Art Festival in Durango. As far as how this artist spends her summers, here is a recap.

First, I had a dreadful Arizona festival just about 200 miles away from that horrible fire they had. Everyone was so worried about the fire reaching friends and neighboring towns that the art festival scene exactly on our minds. I consider myself lucky that the campground I booked was still open and that I made it in and out of the area. Compared to what the people over in Arizona were going through, seems like a bad art festival was a bit trivial.

So, back at home, I took some strides toward the goal of 1,000 Woodcuts, cleaned up the studio (again), rearranged some shelving, decided I need a bigger place, built some custom padding and shelving for my trailer, helped a little with a sprinkler system, went on vacation and came up with some new images…in a nutshell, anyway.

The most exciting new images, I think, are a series of eight engravings inspired by the life of a tree. It all started last spring when I ordered some boxwood (a smallish tree of very hard wood and very tight growth rings) from a vendor in Japan. The package came and I fell immediately in love with the small rounded cross-sections of this wonderful tree. They looked like tiny slabs of a very hard wood, the rings so tight together that I couldn’t count them without losing my place several times. Fragile bark covered the outside. Quickly I dusted off some information from the recesses of my memory and started trying to figure out what the tree had gone through in its long and labored life.
I could “read” the rings like a book, so I thought, and started to invent some of the events that caused those rings to be so close together, almost indiscernibly so. Maybe a harsh winter? Perhaps a short growing season caused by…what? What about those irregular waves over there, a fire? A branch that fell in a storm? Well, I guess a botanist I’m not, because I had no clue what story any of those features were trying to tell me. Suffice it to say that I became very intrigued about the events that “my tree” had undergone prior to ending up in the chopping block and subsequently on a long trip across the ocean to Las Vegas.
I remember reading that the old Japanese masters used to print their wood prior to cutting it. They would then proceed to cut the block and make their prints. Afterwards they would compare the finished image with the initial blank block; if they had not “honored” the wood, they would discard the print. I understood that when looking at my boxwood rounds and decided that I would not cut them in squares and that I would try to print something that was already in there: the life of the tree.

So the series was born. I have 7 finished, one more ready to print and 2 blank pieces sitting patiently, waiting for my limited comprehension of trees to understand what they are trying to tell me. I don’t know how many I will do in this series, but as I understand it, my supplier has a great big stack of boxwood!

Another exciting project that is coming this fall is a joint venture with a poet. The book “Entering Spirit” features her poetry coupled with some of my art works. We got together because our arts already harmonized beautifully; the project was really a matter of putting poems and prints together. The book should be out sometime this winter, we don’t know quite when.  And speaking of joint ventures, I’m working with a papermaker now. We chat about a project, we throw some ideas at each other and she makes paper for my cards, my prints, and some works that haven’t been born yet. It is very exciting because she loves to make paper and I love to make prints on hand-made paper.

As far as loose plans, I want to visit more places, learn more about trees for sure, maybe do more big woodcuts and some small ones too. I also want to learn more about the tree rings and stars, I would like to know their names some day, same goes for knots (yes, the kind you tie)...oh! and I would like to learn how to play hacky-sack and the guitar. There is always so much more to learn, isn't there?

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Quote(s) of the Day
"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
--Miles Davis

“Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.”
--Henry Ford

Thanks for listening and health to all,
Maria

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Maria Arango, Printmaker
Las Vegas  Nevada  USA
http://www.1000woodcuts.com
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maria(AT)mariarango.com
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