Our Maggie’s Matt was describing to me a business trip that took him from Brooklyn N.Y., where he and Maggie live, to San Francisco. In terms shaded by an unspoken sense of the irretrievable nature of the past, this transplanted Midwesterner recounted his feelings as he flew over Iowa at 35,000 feet and 700 m.p.h.

The Faraway Look, Looking Glass, and Lane / All intaglio etchings / Larry Welo

Preparing a birthday package for Maggie this past week, I recalled Matt’s words, and thought that it’s a wonderful thing that futures are bright, and our children are finding theirs in places that we love to visit. It was the awareness that the world continues to hold people most dear to us in the face of the sometime- loneliness of new places that I wanted my package to carry to Maggie. I chose an etching by Wisconsin artist, Larry Welo. The printmaker’s deft use of metaphor couches a poetic power in familiar views of the landscape- “The Faraway Look” shows a single, farmhouse hugging the horizon of a composition that broods in a palette of blues. A path leads into the sun-dappled depths of “Looking Glass”. In his newest piece, “Lane”, space beckons the viewer to pause and venture down a woodland path. Welo finds, in each of these, significance in the commonplace. Wrapping up “East of the Sun” for my gift, I felt that the bird’s eye view of the ordered patterns of farmland with a distant, glowing horizon was perfect for my Iowa girl in Brooklyn, New York.

East of the Sun / Intaglio etching / Larry Welo

These are among the images that Larry delivered recently. At that time, we spoke about his discovery of a new Japanese paper that prints the subtlest traces of ink on an etched plate. Larry will be the featured artist on November 5 in our “Talk in the M.U.D.” series.

Talk in the M.U.D. (Talks with artists in the Marion Uptown District) begins this Thursday at 6:30 with sumi-e painter, Karen Kurka Jensen.