Factual Among the Trees

Over the past year, perhaps even longer, the ever present gravity of THE NEWS has weighed heavy on my mind. Consequently, when I first came across Scott Lowery’s poem, Going Smaller, I was deeply inspired, as a printmaker, to use the layering aspects of my medium to physically push this combative, oppressive chatter to the background. At first, I was forced directly into the fray, reading and clipping newspaper articles to create and then transfer the background collage with acetone to printmaking paper. Then I went smaller, leaving behind the news fodder for the crisp line and opaque pigment of wood and ink. Drawing, carving and printing layer upon layer, I sought to drive back the din until it was nothing more than grayscale bringing forth the important things, the small things: the moon, the nuthatch and the oak.

2021 Poet-Artist Collaboration
Red Wing Arts, Red Wing, MN

Poetry: "Going Smaller" by Scott Lowery
First published in Third Wednesday Magazine, Winter 2019