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.

“Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; … refusing to be disheartened… this is what we call the floating world…”
Description of the images created by Japanese (ukiyo-e) wood-cut artists

Hokusai Katsushika’s Kanagawa Great Wave

For me, the miraculous abstraction of Karen Kurka Jensen’s “shikishi boards” is a 21st century parallel to the decorative beauty of the wood-cuts of the Japanese ukiyo-e artists. Washes of metallic pigments collapse the illusion of deep space, and, like Hokusai Katsushika’s iconic, “Kanagawa Great Wave”, create a dramatic interplay of convoluted form, line and color. Their visual impact is cosmic and oceanic in nature. This has been the foundation for my on-going affection for these small sumi-e paintings.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night

Interestingly, the opening of trade with Japan achieved by Matthew Perry’s 1854 “Treaty of Peace and Amity”, allowed a ready stream of Japanese wood-cuts to reach global markets, and the influence on Western art was almost immediate. Compare, for instance, Hokusai’s “Great Wave…” with Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. Such pivotal intersections of history and visual art lend lively understanding to the evolution of imagery and style. The “floating worlds” of the ukiyo-e artists spawned a revolution in Western art- illusionism would never be the same! Tenets of linear perspective as posited in Renaissance Italy were challenged by the choice of creating an abstracted space as compelling as that of the artists of “floating worlds”.

Shikishi board #2 / 9.5″ x 10.5″ / $150 (framed) / Karen Kurka Jensen

A fresh batch of Jensen’s shikishi boards awaits you, and in the spirit of the aesthetic of the ukiyo-e artists I’ve selected this offering from the poetry of Li-young Lee.