Wood Block Print Making: Carol Summers Demonstrates

An artist of international stature gets together with other artists to produce a huge, brightly colored relief print in a Seattle art college studio. He is Carol Summers, a widely-known artist visiting the Pacific Northwest and the members of the Northwest Print Council. He shares his printing "secrets" and, in the video, with an overview of his work up to 1984 that he narrates himself.

"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."

The videotape began as an idea that Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. suggested: Try to tape his process of print making from beginning to end. The whole thing was taped as it happened, and then edited into a viewing length. It was 1984, and Carol Summers was in town for his one man show at the Davidson Galleries, and agreed to demonstrate for the Northwest Print Council using the studio at the Cornish College of Art.

Summers explained one of his prints to the audience in this way:

"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."

(Summers' sound track on "Wood Block Print Making" is on the Web) Full Text Transcript.

1984. 30 Min. Color. ISBN 1-56235-611-9. US$39.95 plus applicable tax, shipping and handling. Send e-mail for information you need for mail order. Send E-mail now