[Baren]: The mailing list / discussion forum for woodblock printmaking.

Baren Digest              Monday, 9 November 1998      Volume 05 : Number 338

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From: April Vollmer/John Yamaguchi <aprilvollmer@altavista.net>
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1998 21:25:20 -0400
Subject: [Baren 2045] Noda Workshop 

Wow, Baren has been intense lately! Starting with Dave's description of his
community woodcut workshop, Richard on printing, Grahm and Gary on
comupters. Dave again on paper moisture...great discussion/information all
around!

I especially enjoyed reading Dave's description of the printers who think
he's a great cutter, and the cutters who think he's a great printer!

I wanted to write about my experience taking a woodcut workshop here in New
York. The past two weekends I had an opportunity to study traditional
Japanese hanga woodcut printmaking with Prof. Tetsuya Noda of Tokyo
University. This was a four day workshop sponsored by the Japan Society and
the Ukiyo-e Society and held at Columbia University's new Leroy Nieman
printshop. 25 students from various universities participated.

I have studied hanga, and have been printing for several years now.  I had
a show of woodcuts last May that had some good reviews (among the people
who count most, anyway!). I felt fairly secure in my understanding of
hanga, but I took the class knowing my technique can always be improved.

Well, I was amazed at the amount I learned. It was such a pleasure to work
with a man with so much experience. He is an artist who prints hanga
combined with photosilkscreens, and his work is in many museum collections
around the world. He has also been teaching at Tokyo University for many
years. His English is excellent, and to top it all off, he's a relly nice
guy!

I found it was the things he took for granted that I found most
interesting. The sense of the unity of hanga, the use of simple, everyday
materials-rice, bamboo, mulberry bark, shark skin-the same materials you
might cook with! Printmaking connects to the land and the seasons, the
growing cycles of the printing materials (kozo, bamboo, rice, even
horsehair), the humidity and temperature of the air. The workshops are also
closely interrelated, with papermakers, baren makers, tool makers, all
these specialized crafts working together.

Prof. Toda tore the paper by wetting a folded edge, and pulling the halves
apart, so each sheet was the same size and nothing was wasted. This is
somehow contrary to the Western way of cutting by deciding what size you
want, and chopping the paper to fit your concept. In the same way, drawing
on thin washi and gluing it to the block to transfer the design was so
simple, such a direct use of the same materials, I was surprised that I
never tried it before! Even the tokibo, a little application brush made
from strips of the bamboo sheath used as a baren cover (which seems so
irrelevant to the final image) is an example of the wholeness of
traditional hanga, makeing something useful from every scrap.

These are the sorts of ideas that were most excited me in this class. I do
love contemporary art, and I love my Mac-that is my world at the turn of
the century. But it seems important to understand that one of the very
special things about traditional hanga is that it embodies this unified way
of relating to the world.

April Vollmer

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From: Gary Luedtke <GLuedtke@compuserve.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 07:45:24 -0500
Subject: [Baren 2046] Re: Introduction 

Thanks for the updated list ,  Dave.

Gary

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End of Baren Digest V5 #338
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