A Taste of the Japanese Tea Ceremony @ Cotuit Center for the Arts

Color and black-and-white original prints by East Falmouth artist Evan Charney will be on exhibit at the upper level gallery at Cotuit Center for the Arts from Saturday, May 5, through June 10. There will be an opening reception for this exhibit and the lower gallery exhibit, “A Taste of the Japanese Tea Ceremony,” on Saturday, May 5, from 5 to 7 PM. All are welcome to attend.

 

The prints—color woodcuts  and linoleum block prints, color and black-and-white wood engravings, screen prints, and combination works—depict summer landscapes, winter scenes, birds, people, especially children, and pets, both on the Cape and in Sanibel Island, Florida. Featured also are two woodcuts of Japanese kabuki dancers. 

A retired pediatrician, Charney has been fascinated with printmaking his whole life, studying it at art school before going into medicine, and continuing to refine his skills when time allowed.

 

“It’s a work perverse art form: as much craft as art,” said Charney. “Unlike painting, the outcome in printmaking is indirect, hidden, the result uncertain until the very end.  But then there is nothing as satisfying as ‘pulling’ the final print, the ‘Aha!’ moment when you lift the paper from the press and see what God hath wrought.”

 

Each print woodcut or linoleum block print may require carving several different images into different pieces of wood or linoleum, and several different pressings to create the desired image. Included in the exhibit is a display on how woodcuts are made, showing nine stages in the creation of his woodcut, “Red Chairs,” a vivid depiction of two red Adirondack chairs in a peaceful lakeside setting.  

 

Mr. Chaney’s prints are in many private collections and have been selected for juried exhibitions in Rochester, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Worcester and Cape Cod, Massachusetts; and Sanibel and Ft. Meyers, Florida.  His prints have received numerous awards. His engraving of his daughter’s dog Chip, which is included in this show, was recently accepted into the national Wood Engravers Network exhibition.

 

Cotuit Center for the arts is at 4404 Route 28 in Cotuit. For more information, call 508-428-0669 or visit artsonthecape.org.

 

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