I recently visited the Duluth Art Institute (DAI) in its new downtown location on a lunch break with a group of my colleagues. When we arrived, Christina Woods, the Executive Director, explained a little about the two exhibiting artists, one of whom was local artist Tom Rauschenfels.
Rauschenfels’ primary artform is called woodcut printmaking, in which sharp
tools are used to carve a design into the surface of a wooden block. After carving, the block is inked, and a print is made by pressing paper onto the block. The raised areas will transfer the ink, while the areas that were cut away remain blank. Woods explained the significance of the many colors in Rauschenfels’ work: the process of adding layers is very difficult in printmaking.
As we walked around the gallery and explored the prints, we had the opportunity to see many of the original woodblocks from which they had been made. Although I am no expert, I love art and trying different forms of it. I began to imagine what this process would look like. What kinds of tools were used? How would you align the images to create layers of color? If I began to carve a piece of wood, where would I make my first cut?
I realized that in some ways, this type of art is the reverse of many others. If I were to use a medium like pencil or paint, I would create a line where I ultimately wanted the image to be visible, but with woodcut, whatever I carved away would become invisible in the final print. To make these beautiful pieces of art, one could not just envision the final piece and begin to follow the lines to create that picture, one needed to first identify areas to be removed to raise the desired image.
Woodcut printmaking struck me as a beautiful analogy for how we can form better communities. By shifting our focus towards emphasizing what we want to raise up, we can recognize the areas that may need to be carved away. We do not have a blank societal slate to start from, and it is often the process of whittling away unneeded or even harmful elements that brings the communities we want to see into relief. It is important to have that final image in mind, but it is also important to consider what is already here. Which aspects of our communities are beneficial and should be raised to the forefront, and which might need to be carved away or removed? How do we move from a monochromatic image and begin to add layers of color? What kinds of careful consideration and alignment are needed as a part of that process?
We have the ability to create communities that are beautiful works of art, colored by our diversity of thoughts, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Communities that hold elements of our past, present, and our co-imagined future. This can only happen as we work together to identify elements based on our common values to raise, and those to cut away. Like woodcut printmaking, it is a process that happens over time, and whose layers and progressive prints ultimately form shifting shapes that represent the challenges and rewards of communal learning and growth.
“Carving Our Communities: Lessons from Woodcut Printmaking,” written by Northspan Consultant Amber Lewis, was published in the Winter 2025 issue of the Duluth Art Institute’s magazine, HUE.