This Week's Post: Young Wolf-- Beginning of the Woodcuts

September 21, 2016 Fred Montague

This weekly blog post and its host website cover a wide variety of Fred Montague's environmental commentaries, gardening topics, and wildlife/art activities. Please browse the website and the blog archives for topics you are interested in.

Young Wolf-- Beginning of the Woodcuts

The first woodcut I published is the "Young Wolf." In 1997 I experimented with printing woodcut images on my 1913 Golding letterpress after having printed pages for my artists' books and letterpress prints.

The woodcut images are in contrast to my previous drawings and prints. Those incorporated much more fine-line detail. The woodcuts, some of which are nearly silhouettes, emphasize shape, negative space, and hints of detail.

A professor of visual psychology remarked to me at a recent art exhibit that my woodcuts were striking in their high-contrast (black/white) presentation and their subtle hint of important information. In what I took for a compliment, he concluded by saying they conveyed important information-- just as a highway warning sign.

The "Young Wolf" print is a signed, limited edition of 88. The image is 8" x 5.5" and I mat them in white for a 14" x 11" frame. The edition is about half sold-out.

My latest woodcut, "Snowy Owl," featured in the July 20th blog post, is one of four in an owl series that I hope to complete in the next three months.

This Week's Post: New Woodcut--Snowy Owl

July 20, 2016 Fred Montague

This Week's Post: New Woodcut--Snowy Owl

I completed the "Snowy Owl" woodcut in June 2016, and I have several other owl portraits on the drawing board for future prints.

The Snowy Owl occurs throughout the North American Arctic (Alaska and Canada). Occasionally it occurs in the lower 48 States, especially in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes Region.

Regarding the bird's facial expression, Alan Eckert, in his 1974 volume, The Owls of North America, remarks that "the eyes are set slightly closer to the top of the head than in other species, and though they can be opened widely at will, more often then not they are partially lidded, tending to give the bird a sleepy or dreamy appearance...".

This particular owl has widely opened eyes.

Print is 14" x 11" matted. $48.00, edition size 88.

This Week's Post: The Stories with the Images, Part 2

June 29, 2016 Fred Montague

The Stories with the Images, Part 2

So far I have completed four woodcuts in the "Ancient Wisdom" series. Last week I highlighted two in the series of four. Here are the stories associated the remaining two so far.

1. "Wa-Maka-Skan"

Wa-Maka-Skan is a Lakota word for all the moving things of the Earth. This woodcut print depicts four types-- the winged peoples, the crawling peoples, the four-legged peoples, and the two-leggeds. The concept and the word reflects a more biocentricworldview, a more life-centered approach to viewing humans' place among other "moving things."

2. "Storyteller's Circle"

In an earlier time, before the recorded word, cultural knowledge was passed from generation to generation through stories told by elders to children. The advantage of the oral tradition is that the stories may be modified by those with experience and insight to fit the changing circumstances of the people. The disadvantage of this mode of cultural coordination is that as the storytellers fade away or are displaced by the written word, both the language and the lessons fade away also. The oral tradition is flexible, but it is extinction-prone. The recorded word has the advantage of "permanence," but the disadvantage of archived error.

This Week's Post: The Stories with the Images, Part 1

June 22, 2016 Fred Montague

The Stories with the Images, Part 1

So far I have completed four woodcuts in the "Ancient Wisdom" series. Here are the stories associated with two of them.

1. "Journey"
My understanding of the interpretation of Native American rock art is that images with a depiction of a hand reflect the personal experience of the artist. A spiral represents a journey. A spiral going "away" is an outbound trip. A double spiral is a journey away and back. What an ingenious way to represent a long trip in a small space (rock surface or tanned hide)-- coil the miles up. If one were to accept all of this literally, the journey could be a vision quest.

2. "Stone Circle"
This simple woodcut depicts a circle of stones that can be found, often partially buried, throughout the plains of North America. In earlier times, some Native Peoples anchored the sides of their hide or brush shelters with stones that they gathered, undoubtedly with considerable effort. Since then the shelters have disappeared and the people who built them are gone, but the rings of stones remain.

From the Gallery: Fred's Woodcut, "Young Wolf"

April 12, 2016 Fred Montague

"Young Wolf" is the first in the current series of thirty-three woodcut prints. To produce each woodcut, Fred carves away the negative space of the image on a maple block, leaving the surface to be inked. He then prints the edition on his 1913 letterpress. The bold silhouette of the woodcut prints present a striking contrast to the detailed pen-and-ink drawings that comprise another part of his work.

A few of these prints are still available.

New Woodcuts: "Polar Bear"

February 21, 2014 Fred Montague

The next five blog posts will introduce five new woodcuts for late winter 2014.

The first, "Polar Bear," was released at the Holiday Open House Exhibit in Salt Lake City. Besides being an appropriate subject for a black ink woodcut, the bear is also the tragically popular 'poster animal' for climate change. The minimal title "Polar Bear" was selected from a longer list-- Great White Bear, Ice Bear, Snow Bear, Rain Bear, the Last Polar Bear, On Thin Ice, Endangered, Extinct, etc. (I have a lot of time to think of titles while I am carving the maple block and printing the prints.) The owners of the prints may choose their own titles. Click on the image to go to the Woodcut Gallery for buying information.

New Work Available: "The Storyteller's Circle"

January 18, 2013 Fred Montague

"The Storyteller's Circle" is my first new woodcut for 2013. Before the recorded word, cultures transmitted their hard-won wisdom and worldviews through spoken stories. The oral tradition enables people to modify their stories as appropriate to fit evolving situations. They have the potential of handing down guidelines with modification. Spoken stories are adaptable, and they tend to promote adaptable (and adapted) lifeways.

On the other hand, modern, industrial cultures (with industrially recorded and transmitted information), endeavor to preserve stories, whether they are currently appropriate or not. Recorded stories are institutionally efficient methods of instilling dogma and the others lies and truths we live by.

Recorded stories for better or worse, are extinction-resistant; oral stories are extinction-prone-- as the storytellers grow old.

Each print in the edition of 88 (printed with my 1913 industrially efficient letterpress) is 8" x 5.5" (matted 14" x 12") and currently sells for $48.

"The Storyteller's Circle," a woodcut by Fred Montague. © 2013 — "The Storyteller's Circle," a woodcut by Fred Montague. © 2013

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