Woodblock show presents with power
Much of the power of the one-day April 28 Steamroller Print Fest also is found in a gallery show at Artspace at Untitled, 1 NE 3.
Many of the 22 artists doing woodblocks, printed on site, push their work into “inimitable territories,” as a gallery representative put it.
In a woodblock by Jim Weaver, for example, a dark coyote howls, surrounded by cactus in the white sky over distant dark peaks.
Samantha Kickingbird depicts Aladdin summoning a genie in one of Scheherazade’s thousand and one tales in her complex composition.
Magic apparently has happened to a rabbit who has sprouted antlers “In the Moonlight,” in another highly imaginative work by Cameron Lewis.
Fantastic, too, is a skeleton with four leaf “wings” by George Wilson, while a large cactus is one of the “Water Towers” in a work by Kjelshus Collins.
A woman looking down also has something winglike on her back, and ornate tattoos on her arms, in a “Portrait of a Siren’s Apprentice” by Ginna Dowling.
Adrienne Day offers us a six-part “Lotus Sermon,” and Ric Miller finds “Tranquility” in a white fish by a lily pad, floating in flat black water.
Dangling dice cubes, near the wheel of a driverless car on the highway, symbolize “Riding With Lady Luck,” in a woodblock by Trace Logan.
False teeth with feet are scattered across flat plains, between handhills, and mountains on the horizon, in “Ozmandias,” by Theresa Hultberg.
Distant clouds move along the utterly flat horizon, over the wide, wave-gouged surface of “Lake Thunderbird,” in a “scape” by Douglas Shaw Elder.
Outlined with simple white lines on black, “The Cellist” seems to recede from us, his feet crossed in front of him, in a woodblock by Bert Seabourn.
Other artists are Cynthia Adler, B.J. White, Bryan Boone, Martin Hallren, Luke Funk, Van Lango, Justin Stier, Sean Valli, Ari Collins and Emma Difani.
The gallery woodblock exhibit by area and regional artists is highly recommended in its run through Saturday.