Woodcuts

Woodcuts, 1969

On this page is a collection of about eighty woodcuts I created in the years 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1971. Most of these prints are reproduced on your screen as actual size. Some of the prints are larger, a little bit, and some are actually quite a bit smaller. I printed them all using a wooden kitchen spoon as a printing press. Most have not been seen since they appeared in the underground press in America in the late sixties and early seventies. I reproduce them here because they still look good to me and may be of interest to others. I have titled them, and this does not necessarily have anything to do with what is in the visual image, but it may. Most of these woodcuts appeared as visual companions to articles in "WIN Magazine" and many "underground" newspapers to which I contributed during those tumultuous years. They were perfect as paste-up items since they were about the actual size represented here and complemented the text aesthetically as well as philosophically. After all, type was originally cut from wood and visual work cut from wood I consider a first cousin. The two have seemed always to play quite happily together.

You may purchase copies of the prints you see on this page by contacting me at my e-mail address, and inquiring. Prices vary but most cost around twenty-five dollars each. All prints are signed and numbered by me and were printed by me on Japanese rice paper with, as mentioned above, a wooden kitchen spoon used as my printing press.

Joy

Old King

Lonesome Suzie

Love

Domestic Tooling

Loving

St. Marky

Marky

Together

Martyr

Liberatress

Screwing

Matriarchal

Maw

Mia

Milk and Eggs

Model

Monument

Mother's Mission

Muse

Mutation

Up and Down

Nature Woman

A Short Story

A few years ago a friend came by and while looking through a flat file drawer full of these prints commented that they looked like those hippy pictures that used to appear in "all those hippy newspapers" way back in the late sixties.

"They are", I said to him.

He said that wasn't what he meant, and that I could probably sell these as hippy stuff like all that stuff that was back then. "There's a big market for that kind of hippy nostalgia stuff now and this stuff looks just like it," he said.

"It is," I said.

He looked perplexed and somewhat befuddled. Our eyes met and I said, "That's what these are - that stuff. Back then."

Time goes by sometimes like a small cat running from a big dog. My friend put the prints back in the drawer and closed it. We spoke not about this again and I have not seen him nor talked to him since.

MB 2009