Bowl of Cherries_ woodcut_©William Evertson 2014
The latest piece to be completed in the studio is my woodblock, "Bowl of Cherries". The work evolved over several weeks and preliminary sketches and pastels. Overall the piece evolved from the phrase Life is a bowl of cherries, which obviously is often used to mean the opposite. "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" was the title of a song by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson, sung by Ethel Merman in Scandals (1931).
Life is just a bowl of cherries;
Don't make it serious;
Life's too mysterious.
You work, you save, you worry so,
But you can't take your dough when you go, go, go.
So keep repeating it's the berries;
The strongest oak must fall.
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned,
So how can you lose what you've never owned?
Life is just a bowl of cherries,
So live and laugh at it all.
My particular gripe lately has been the dismal state of our broadcast news. Currently our news seems to be all gloss and no substance, or sensationalized, or false equivalents, or formatted with agenda.....and heavily seasoned with bowl of cherry thoughts.
My first work on this topic was a pastel. I gave it the slightly longer title of "Life is a Bowl of Cherries. Protect Yourself with Essential Geometries." Essential geometries and what they would mean is deliberately left to the viewer because I have no answers what will finally push us to more compassion.
When I decided to move this idea to the woodcut format I also wanted to simplify and refine the visual. My pastel was a nice complex piece and a stand alone work. For the graphic version I wanted to further distill elements that made up the idea.
Pencil sketch with watercolor overlay
Inking the sketch
Carving the key block
First print pulled from key block
Originating from the same place as the pastel but very different look.
No comments:
Post a Comment