Wood Block Print Making:
Carol Summers Demonstrates
The transcribed original narrative from a 30-minute
videotape demonstration on print making. The technique featured is
wood block print making, spotlighting Mr. Carol Summers showing
a live audience how he got the special effects for which
his art is famous. This is your free transcript on-line. Video Ordering Information.
Introduction
Narrator: Hello. This is Bill Ritchie introducing
this selection from "Living Prints" - the series of
video tapes about fine art prints. You will be hearing the sound
track from "Wood Block Print Making: Carol Summers Demonstrates."
Mr. Summers is an internationally-known artist whose specialty
is very big wood block prints. They are usually over three feet
tall and are brilliantly colored. He was recorded for this video
tape in 1984 at the Cornish Institute, an art school in Seattle.
Watching him were members of the Northwest Print Council, and
their friends, who sponsored the show. Listen, now, as the host
for the program introduces this exciting, live event.
Karen Guzak's introduction
My name is Karen Guzak. I'm from the Northwest Print Council.
We brought Carol Summers here from California in conjunction
with the show that's at the Sam Davidson Gallery. All I can
say is that were all anxious to see Carol Summers' demonstration
and lets get on with it.
Carol Summers' overview of his printing "secrets"
This is another print of a place that I've never been to.
It's called Kialing Kiang (Spelling?) It refers to the mountainous
area around the town of Kuei-lin - in China. Kialing Kiang is
a river that runs through them. And I've always been fascinated
by pictures of the place. I've never visited there. This, by
the way, is the print that I brought the blocks for and I'm going
to print for my demonstration
The blue of the river is inked with an opaque blue. Very
white, an opaque blue. The paper is put then on this block and
I roll a transparent blue on the top so the rolling transparent
blue on the front of the paper prints the opaque and lighter blue
on the back at the same time. So that explains the different
character of the river in its brightness. It's printed on both
sides, and a transparent color backed up with a light one.
After I put the ink on I spray them with a solvent which dissolves
them; it, in essence transforms an ink into a dye. It transforms
an ink surface, an ink layer on the surface of the paper into
a dyed paper. It dyes the fibers of the paper.
First, I'm going to make a sketch for you. I start out by
making sketch on the paper I want to use and the size I want to
use. The paper I'm using is a Japanese paper, called Suzuki,
comes in 3 by 6 sheets and is white. Japanese paper has a rough
side and a smooth side. Either one is all right to use. I like
to use the rough side, just because I like the little more tooth.
But, sometimes I use the other side, too. Of course, there are,
I'm sure, other oriental papers made to use one side and not the
other. The ones that I use are un-sized, I can't tell it makes
that much difference other than visually.
Question: What brand of inks are you using?
Well . . . I use a variety of brands. I started off using
letterpress inks, they work the best for me. As you'll see in
my process of working that I need an ink that is relatively soft
and that I can dissolve the mineral spirits and I like it to dissolve
easily and sink into the paper and run.
Unfortunately, letterpress printing is virtually disappeared
from the world and with it letterpress inks and so I've found
that there are still some places that I could still get them.
But I also use lithographic inks. My inks, I use - I get inks
from a place called Louis Roberts a nation wide ink manufacturer.
I think their headquarters are in New Jersey.
And I use Daniel Smith Inks. And I use inks from
a place in New York called Ink service. I used to use
IPI letterpress inks but that's a discontinued line and
some of my inks I have IPI make for me. The inks I use
all the time. Like blue, I use a medium blue and a reflex blue
which I found very satisfactory and they will make them up for
me using their own formulas from the letterpress days. And I
use enough of them so that every few years I order 25 pounds,
they'll make them for me.
Sometimes I find the inks in particularly things like etching
inks and litho inks are a little stiff. Even the letterpress
inks. So, I cut them down. I usually use a product called Tack-out.
I use it - thins the consistency. (Pointing to another product,
Miracle Gel Reducer, now called Setswell Compound.)
And his is a product from Daniel Smith. He claims is far superior.
But essentially it does the same thing. It reduces the tack
of the ink.
Question: Why do you need to take the tack out of
the ink?
I need to take the tack out of the ink because I roll the
ink directly on the paper as well as onto the block some time
depending on what I am doing. If there is too much tack in the
ink, of course it pulls the paper apart. The paper's soft.
I feel that an image is so much of a result of the way that
it is done that the notion of making a sketch and then doing it
something else is always disappointing and frustrating.
So I try to do it immediately as I want it and if I don't like
it and throw it away. Or I learn from it what is it that I don't
like and I try to change that. And then I use that finished sketch,
so to speak, as my master and I make my blocks from that.
This is going to be the back of the print. I'm putting this
color on here because I want it to lighten up the color that is
going to be on the front. So I usually put on less ink or, another
alternative, would be to back it up with a lighter color, like
this, makes it sort of like - oh - under painting. As was so popular
in Renaissance painting. To put a dark transparent on top of
the light under color.
(He works a long while, concentrating on sketching his
design and saying nothing.)
Question: Is those hard rubber rollers you're using?
It's relatively hard it what I call a hard-ish roller. Hard
to medium.
Question: Where do you get them?
I don't know. Rollers are hard to find. Good rollers. This
roller came from a place called Fine Art Materials in New
York. But I know that he doesn't have them anymore. These little
rollers - the little wire rollers - are convenient, and they came
from Craft Tools.
(To provide the view with an overview of Summers' entire
process, the video skips forward to the last part.)
I'm going to spray this with a solvent. Mineral spirits.
Probably shorten your life ten or fifteen years. However, I
always feel that if Mr. Reagan is elected it won't make any difference.
(Laughter, some people applause. Someone asks where his hand
atomizer is, he no longer uses it. He sprays a mist of mineral
spirits; audience members, sensitive to the hazards of mineral
spirit fumes, leave the room.)
Question: Do you smoke?
Occasionally. Now this is a print, but you can't get a very accurate notion
of what it looks like while it's wet. It's like pebbles in a
stream - they'll be lighter when it dries. Where the light color
is behind the green become much clearer when it dries. That would
be much lighter with the relationship with the dark when it dries.
The blue will be particularly lighter. The red would pretty
much the same when it dries as when it's wet. The relationships
are unreadable when in a wet state. So I hang it up for about
a half an hour so it would dry out sufficiently so the colors
will show through.
Question: In making another one for an edition of
custom prints is there an outline of the basic form to lay the
paper over?
If I were satisfied with that, I would use that very piece
of paper and make from that a set of blocks. And I have brought
with me a set of blocks from a print that is not terribly dissimilar,
technically, from this one which I'll make a print of right now.
These are blocks that are cut from plywood. It's quarter-inch
ply and it's pine - an AC pine - and one side's good and one side
has holes. I don't mind the holes, usually if I needed to use
it I could place the shapes that I wanted to cut out in such a
way that they float their way around those.
Question: Do you always use ply wood or do you use
other wood?
I have used other wood - planks. But ply wood - you don't
have the problem with warpage that you do with solid wood. Of
course if you get anything wider than one foot wide you have real
problems to find wood. Pine has become an endangered species,
unfortunately, and not as available as it used to be. But almost
any lumber yard can get it for you.
In this case I would like the ink not to be perfectly even,
that's why I need a overloaded roller and try to maintain that
texture that comes about thereby. Of course, in the process of
printing why the block tends to even itself out.
Since most of the printing I do is visible from the top I
don't need a very complicated registry. I usually cut the blocks
to be a quarter inch larger than my paper. I put the paper down
in the middle. If I - ordinarily, if it's off register I can
move the paper. (Audience members giggle at his casual approach
to what is usually a critical alignment of colors). Of course
in this case since there's going to be a printed area I can't
move it the first time, but the second time I could.
Now you can see that some of the hairs of the paper to be
pulled off the roller. If that gets to be too bad than I need
to take the tack out of the ink a little bit. I prefer as much
as possible to use inks right out of the can. I feel any mixing
of the ink it tends to dull the colors. Since I like their brilliance,
I try not to - I avoid mixing.
I printed on the back at the same time it's printed on the
front. Now, in registering for the second block I can just -
uh - feel if it fits, see, and if it doesn't than I could move
it without . . .. (laughter, as registering is usually more
precise) Also the paper vaguely transparent and sometimes,
of course, you can see enough through it to sort of see where
the shapes are.
Question: How much variation is there in the prints
through the edition?
It's pretty controllable. Of course if you go through a stack
of prints each one has their own individual difference. My general
feeling about that is that a great concern among of print makers
for identicalness is a kind of a moral imperative that comes out
of the process of printing. You have a method here where your
making a multiple print. And to make it then a virtue that each
one be identical strikes me as really beside the point. I mean,
I'm concerned about making a print that I like; and some of them
are darker and some of them are lighter. If I don't like them
I throw them away. And so I try to make them the same only because
I have in my head a notion of what I want. Which doesn't include
all of the variations. But that's my guiding criterion.
For a direct answer to your question I think that variations
are less than I might of expect given the problem. I don't see
it as - it isn't very large.
Question: Do you have an assistant or do you pull
all of your prints?
I have a guy that helps me. He does whatever I would do and
he is as capable as I am. It always seems to work out that -
almost every print works out that - there are little waiting times
it seems to make it work out so that he's doing something while
I'm doing something. Its amazing.
Question: Some of your prints, where you've got rainbows,
how do you roll those?
Oh, I've printed rainbows in variety of ways. Sometimes they're
printed with a block. Particularly if they're small. It's difficult
to roll little lines. Rainbows that are this wide usually are
- its a block that I jigsaw out and ink it and actually print
it. So as you can see the technique doesn't lend itself very
well to small details. Of course if shapes are small why I often
cut a block for them. Particularly for a rainbow with many colors
next to each other would be virtually impossible to do it this
way. Often times I make a block that, uh, separately ink each
part, put it back together and print it as a unit.
Question: So you don't have that - that's not cut
into your plate?
There's no block, there's nothing cut there, I'm just following
the edge.
(Mr. Summers proceeds to spray a mist of mineral spirits
over the paper and the audience applauds as he hold up the finished
proof. The video fades to black. Then, he narrates a slide show
of his other works.)
Slide show - first slide
Most of my prints have a story of some kind - to me. This
one is called "Little Wolf's Last Camp." Little Wolf
was a leader of a band of the Sioux that ended up being interned
in the Oklahoma Territory and wanted very much to return to the
Yellowstone where they had come from. And since that wasn't convenient
for the government they never allowed them to do so. Finally
they ran away and went back there anyway. They spent a whole
winter at a secluded lake they found I think in the Dakotas or
maybe in Wyoming.
Little Wolf was chosen to be the leader of this band, I think
there was probably about two-hundred people involved. Just because
he was kind of elected as the most capable to lead them. After
it was over he returned of being just another person in the group.
He had no prestige particularly that devolved on him from this
exploit. But that was the subject of the print.
Slide show - second slide
This is called "California." And I did it shortly
after moving to California. I lived for twenty years in New York.
I got tired after twenty years living in the city and not seeing
the stars or trees, having grown up in the country. So I decided
I wanted to change my living place and I moved to California.
And this is one of those impressions of California that I was
enamored of its barren hills and its saturated coloring.
Slide show - third slide
This is an earlier print, actually it's turned out to be one
of the, probably the most popular and most reproduced of any of
my work. It's called "Dream of Constantine". And it's
based on a passage in a fresco by Piero della Francesca in Rezzo(?).
Slide show - fourth slide
This is a print that was printed on some paper that I had
made for me in Japan. I met a man, a Japanese, who lives in Tokyo
- in Kyoto - who was interested in paper making. He wrote a book
on paper making in consequently knew paper making villages in his
neighborhood and arranged for me for a man in a tiny village to
make some paper for me. And this is the first print that I did
on that paper. It's called "Cairo's Flag". Just because
it seemed to have a flag-like thing and it had a pyramid in it.
Slide show - fifth slide
This is a print that I made on commission for a gallery in
Japan that was set up in partnership with a dealer that I have
in San Francisco. And they commissioned me to make two prints
- this being one of them. This is called - and I thought appropriately
for a Japanese audience - "Kamikaze." It refers original
Kamikaze. Kamikaze means divine wind.
It is a story that came about - I think in the middle of the
fifteenth century - a powerful Korean government undertook to
invade Japan. And did so, actually, but left at the end of the
year to get together a bigger army. And so the next year they
were really going to do invade Japan and take it over completely.
But with a huge army and fleet that they had assembled, a storm
came up that blew their boats on to, dispersed them and blew them
up onto the shore and really saved Japan from being taken over
by this Korean army. And so that storm was considered to be the
divine wind that saved Japan.
Slide show - sixth slide
This was the other print that I did for the gallery in Japan.
It's called "Starry Night". I remember talking to
Gene Baro and he expressed to me that he thought I was incredibly
cheap by using the title like "Starry night". (Chuckle)
It should be reserved to Vincent [van Gogh] forever.
Slide show - seventh slide
This print is from the mid-seventies. It's called "Rainy
Mountain Star Fall." It relates to a legend of the Kiowas.
The Kiowas saw themselves as having reached their - the apogee
of their power about the early part of the last century. It seems
that in 1832 I think it was - it might of been '34 - there was
a particularly wonderful display of shooting stars. And the Kiowas
saw that - were struck by the grandeur of the display that year
- and associated it with the height of their power. It was just
at the time when they had amalgamated their empire - it was in
Oklahoma - and just before the arrival, of course, of the white
man, which of course, destroyed them.
Slide show - eighth slide
This print is called "Basholi." Once again it relates
to my interest in Indian painting. Basholi is a little town in
what's called the Hill Country. It's the foothills in the Himalayas
in Ladakh. Basholi is a town that gave rise to an important school
of painting.
One of the things that was notable or distinctive about Basholi
painting was the use of real strong colors - particularly the
red and the yellow. The yellow, curiously enough, the pigment
of the yellow was gotten from water buffalo urine, which they
allowed to dry in the sun to evaporate all of the liquid. And
then what was left was used as a pigment and mixed again with
water. And it's incredibly - a dense kind of chrome-like yellow,
but transparent and very permanent.
Slide show - ninth slide
This print's called "Baktapur." Baktapur is a name
of a town in the Kathmandu Valley. The Kathmandu Valley is the
bed of an ancient lake. There were, in that valley, three different
kingdoms. One of them was Baktapur. This town. This relates
to the wanderings through that village, which is a really beautiful
place.
Closing
(The video returns to the question and answer period after
the demonstration).
Are there any secrets that I can share? Often times I combine
monotype with the prints.
Question: You mean scratch the color on the wood,
is that what you mean?
Yes. If I put the color on the wood, if I put the ink on
the wood then it scratch it on the wood that's a monotype of technique
and that no ink - there to print. So if I printed this, I'd end
up with a blue area with a white line through it.
Question: Do you ever use heavier paper at all?
Very seldom. And for two obvious reasons - one, that I depend
on the paper being thin enough to fall off the edge of the block
so that when I roll the ink on there is a physical level difference.
And the other is thicker papers, having more body, have more
ink to absorb so that you need to put more on in order to get
the same intensity of color. So thinner papers are easier to
fill up the pigment.
Well, thank You, all for coming.
(Loud and long applause from a grateful audience).
Narrator: You've just heard "Wood Block Print Making;
Carol Summers Demonstrates." This transcription is copyrighted
1992 by Bill Ritchie, who is a creator and distributor of Living Prints information.
The Narrator: Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. is an itinerant art
professor, author and media arts futurist. Videotape productions about art
processes are one of his main interests. He lives in Seattle.
