Old Farmhouse

Summer 1994

This print was completely different from anything I had made up to that point (I started work on it in 1993). That was during the 5th year of work on the '100 Poets'. Although I had struggled with keeping the prints 'on schedule' in the early years of that series, I had by this time, pretty much settled into the routine of issuing one new print per month. The prints were not overly complicated, and four weeks was more than enough time to get one done.

But the prints themselves had also become a bit 'routine'. Of course they had - they were a unified series - and I was eager to 'stretch out' a bit and try something different. The image - this is a full-size o-ban print - represents an old farmhouse preserved over at the local history museum in Hamura, the town in west Tokyo where I was living at the time, and was sketched from photographs. The stone statue (which came out looking like some kind of football-playing alien), is in a different part of the museum, and I 'moved' it to a location in front of the old house.

The block set was finished up around the end of that year, and I did a quick trial printing then, but it wasn't until the next summer that I had a chance to more carefully work on it, with this result ...

There are I think 32 impressions, of only two pigments - black and prussian blue. Although I can't say much for the 'art', I was quite happy with the printing, and one day when I get time for it, I very much want to explore more of this type of work.

(Some years later, in late 1999, I used the blocks to pull 30 copies to send to the 'Baren Forum' group, as my participation in their 3rd Print Exchange.)