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Issue 12: Opening Peter Greenaway's Tulse Luper Suitcases

Art Hazelwood: A Graphic Witness of America

Author: David A. Beronä
Published: August 2005

Abstract (E): This essay examines the power of the contemporary print in the work of the San Francisco printmaker, Art Hazelwood. Narrative features are identified in Hazelwood's early series of woodcuts that display distinctive scenes of contemporary life, block books that merge image and text in an imaginative display, stylized book illustrations, accordion style artists books, and his satirical commentary on American imperialism in Iraq called Hubris Corpulentus .

Abstract (F): Cet article analyse le pouvoir de la gravure chez Art Hazelwood, un artiste contemporain de San Francisco. Dans ses premiers travaux, la dimension narrative est omniprésente : ses séries de gravures sur bois donnent à voir des scènes de la vie moderne, ses livres entremêlent textes et images dans des mises en pages inventives, font des emprunts à des types d'illustration très stylisée et aux livres d'artistes qui jouent avec le modèle du livre-accordéon ; enfin, l'article souligne aussi comment le travail de Hazelwood donne un commentaire satirique de l'impérialisme américain en Irak que l'auteur nomme Hubris Corpulentus.

keywords: Art Hazelwood, printmaking, book illustration, satire, Iraq.

Every artist may begin their personal quest with noble intentions but often succumb to opportunistic distractions. Whatever the nature of the artist, the engraving that best displays this artistic journey is Le Cheval, la Mort et le Diable ( The Knight, Death and The Devil ) by Albrecht Durer, where the Devil is forever present to distract the Knight from his path. Temptations in Durer's time persist in our contemporary society where money and power rule every aspect of our Western culture. Artists, who begin their careers with youthful enthusiasm and daring curiosity, trade in their armor for a fashionable suit that makes them appealing to a gullible public.

One such modern printmaker who has not forsaken his private mission and taken his artistic quest quite literally, is the San Francisco painter and printmaker, Art Hazelwood, who has exhibited in Japan and Europe as well as in the United States. His perception of art is based on Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West , where there is no place for art in a culture based on power and where the artist with integrity forever remains an outsider.

"Art is always malcontent, discontent and provocative. In an age such as ours, an age of mega-corruption and hyper-power, an age that dwarfs the individual and the simple human gesture which is at the basis of all art, in such an age the only valid use of art, I can find worthy, is to reflect on the heartless, and thoughtless world we inhabit."[1]

How does Hazelwood managed to keep himself optimistic in the world of darkness that pervades his work? A glimpse of his work reflects the acceptance of his own personal creed, as a witness to our contemporary culture and the development in craft and content that has culminated in his recent controversial series of satirical prints against the war in Iraq.

"To reflect on decay without decaying oneself is the trickiest of games to play. I help my art by enlisting allies in my game. I choose satire, and sarcasm as weapons and I enlist the help of the literary protector more often than not these days. Sometimes a wild scream of outrage erupts but more often I have learned a certain reserve will allow for a more sincere viewing from any audience. And I certainly want to communicate what I have found in these dark soundings of pessimism. What I have found is there in my art, a record from the outside looking in with a satirical grimace."[2]

Hazelwood's artistic journey began with his extensive travels throughout Asia, Europe, North Africa and the United States. His woodcuts from this early period reflect a growing skill and a highly imaginative, symbolic language that tussle visual sensibilities. His early work, Promenade: A Voyeur's Guide to America (1994), is a series of 26 woodcuts that display Hazelwood's initial interest in the human form, set against the background of the American landscape that he found "enveloped in a vast waste of isolation."[3]Hazelwood's choice of the woodcut to display the alienated spirit of a culture reflects the choice of many American masters of the woodcut who recognized that "the challenge of dealing with the individualistic medium of wood attracts a specific type of artist."[4] Hazelwood is like so many other American wood engravers who used one of the ancient mediums—the woodcut—as a way to display the social injustices of the modern world. His personal relationship with his materials reflects the harmony between artist, content and medium. Lynd Ward, who is recognized as the pioneer of the woodcut novel in America, best describes the relationship between artist and the woodblock.

"The wood is reluctant, the artist determined, and it is reasonable to suggest that that battle of wills brings about a result quite different from those media in which the hand of the artist moves brush or pencil or crayon freely over the working surface. With wood, every movement of the tool involves overcoming resistance and demands the use of a certain amount of sheer physical force. Every block and every subject is a new challenge. The result is an emotional involvement between man and material that, enduring over the years, somehow takes on the character of an addiction, or a love affair, or something similarly irrational. At any rate, there seems to be no know cure."[5]

Hazelwood's initial work is a personal record of American culture and compares to similar pictorial journeys that captured twentieth century American manners such as A Wanderer in Woodcuts (1932) by H[enry] Glintenkamp.[6] This early twentieth century example of a travel log in woodcuts, displays notable differences in content with Hazelwood's work. Glintenkamp's journey reflects a first class tourist's album of picturesque scenes from a world tour with the major inconvenience being "harassing official difficulties" at customs. Rather than the tourist's paths that Glintenkamp displays, Hazelwood steps away from the tourist attractions to the side streets and captures a different picture of American culture that is analogous to Leftists printmakers of the 1930s like Harry Gottlieb, and Elizabeth Olds .[7]

Hazelwood captures everyday activities in his woodcuts that provide the general viewer a frame of reference. The list of titles presents the scope of activities that he covers: "Circus," "Parade," "Las Vegas Nudes on Ice," "Rodeo," and "Shucking Oysters" (fig. 1).

1. Art Hazelwood, "Shucking Oysters," 1992, woodcut, 279 x 178 mm, published in Promenade: A Voyeur's Guide to America: 26 Woodcuts by Art Hazelwood . Epigone Press, 1993. (courtesy of the artist)

Each print is filled with figures that seem to squeeze inside the edges. These visually engaging prints reflect Hazelwood's youthful enthusiasm in attempting to present a feeling and moment in its entirety, with never enough room to display all he wishes to convey within the borders of the print. The energy and tension in the various poses of the figures are displayed with a running current of lines gouged out by hand. This extensive detail and focus in his prints brings us closer into each scene. His content, rather than a naturalistic display and accurate perspective of figures and scenes, reflects the parameters of printmakers in leftist magazines like The Masses and later, New Masses , which focused on the expression of everyday events in American culture, though with a thematic focus on social issues that Hazelwood would adapt later in his career.[8]

One particular piece in this series of woodcuts is called "Parade," and shows Hazelwood's initial interest in a linear narrative that continues throughout his career and pervades his current work. This is a series of five prints printed on a fold out page. Each print falls within the thematic framework of the title beginning with a leg-kicking, baton twirling girl in the foreground of a band with a trumpet player and drummer. This print is followed by a trombone player—a member of the band from the previous print, joined by a preacher, marching soldiers, and a chorus of singers (fig. 2). The third print is filled with circus figures and animals including a tiger, clowns and a female acrobat on a swing with a snake wrapped seductively around her arm. The fourth print shows couples passionately wrapped in a dance contest with a judge in the background observing their pulsating body movements. The final print, in this linear narrative, displays a guitarist, a caracha player, a woman carrying a platter of food, a bishop wearing a miter and a woman singing to the music. The visual flow from left to right is directed from face to face within each print and seems to flow rhythmically like the music in a parade.

2. Art Hazelwood, "Parade," 1992, woodcut, 102 x 96 mm. Print 2 of five in foldout, published in Promenade: A Voyeur's Guide to America: 26 Woodcuts by Art Hazelwood . Epigone Press, 1993. (courtesy of the artist)

Hazelwood's next series of woodcuts is called Forest Song (1995) and includes 12 woodcuts and 11 woodcut prints of text, which was, like Promenade , also offered in an inexpensive book format. This is a dream-like journey that records an illness and recovery that Hazelwood experienced in India.

"The prints grew out of a period of illness in India. I was traveling for several months in Asia and found myself quite sick in Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government-in-exile. There I stayed for two months being treated by Tibetan doctors and living in a hotel/monastery so that every morning at 3 a.m. I would awaken to the sound of chanting monks. A mysterious environment to be sinking into the lethargy of illness. The slow recovery and its accompanying sense of inwardness is the feeling out of which this series came. Although it shows no outward reference to the surrounding environment or my illness the prints are psychologically representative. The text was written by me to add to the atmosphere of mystery rather than as explanation."[9]

This series is a highly personal and bizarre journey into the fantastic and is related in style to Brazilian chapbooks called "folhetos," which are poems illustrated by primitive woodcuts that display a "simplicity, spontaneity and naturalness of expression."[10] Hazelwood's rich imagery of crows with female torsos, a wolf with a male torso, sharks, bears, a mother-like figure, an executioner, and a bearded man playing a guitar inhabit his frightful dream world. The text, carved out on the verso of the book, is a song that reads:

"Twilight asleep under dark trees/Cradled in deceptive comfort/An ancient tune/A wailing of forest and swamp/That draws everything inward/To a whirling center/Where the forest lives/From that source/A strange and frightening song/A solitary melody/Radiates outward."[11]

3. Art Hazelwood, "A Wailing of Forest and Swamp," 1994, woodcut, 171 x 248 mm, published in Forest Song by Art Hazelwood . Epigone Press, 1995. (courtesy of the artist)

In the print, "A Wailing of Forest and Swamp (fig. 3)," images are camouflaged like a visual puzzle within the forest. A gazelle on the left hand side of the print is outlined with horizontal lines that blend into the background and a howling female in the upper right hand corner is outlined, conversely, in dark shadow. These teasing discoveries encourage close examination of the print and bring us deeper into Hazelwood's ghostly atmosphere. A female crow-like figure, dominant throughout the series, is asleep, with her head resting on a fish she uses as a pillow. Adding to his uncanny picture are trees with female body parts, wolves with long tongues that lurk behind trees, and sharks prowling in the waterway in the lower right hand corner. This dreamlike menagerie of the fantastic contrasts sharply with Hazelwood's chronicles of contemporary life he presented in Promenade and continues in his next series of woodcuts, Walking Up and Down in Asia .

This series records Hazelwood's travels in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, India and Pakistan from 1986 to 1993 in 60 woodcuts. Like Promenade , Hazelwood explores the everyday events on the streets in woodcuts like "Snake Seller, "Night Bus to Danang," and "Thai Beach."

4. Art Hazelwood, "Thai Beach," 1995, woodcut 178 x 241 mm, from the series Walking Up and Down in Asia (Collection of Artist).

Hazelwood moved from the bold, primitive style in his first two series and incorporated white space and a nominal use of line. Figures and objects in these prints begin to spread out on the page as depicted in "Thai Beach (fig. 4)." This technical development reflects Hazelwood's growing confidence with the use of white space and the assurance that the print's content is enhanced by the proper balance of line and white space.

In "Thai Beach," a bare breasted woman spreads out across the foreground in a relaxed pose. All the other figures in the background spring from the top of her naked figure. The unembarrassed expression on the naked woman and the nonchalance of the other beachgoers suggest a relaxed atmosphere. A man reads a book while another woman, with her back to the viewer, walks down the beach. A man with hands on his hips seems to pause in a moment of contemplation. There are blocks of white spaces displayed in this print, such as naked bodies, that pull the viewer into the scene. The calm waters and peaceful sky in the background complement the tranquil feeling of the bathers lounging on the beach. Hazelwood captures a lazy atmosphere on the beach and although the location is Thailand , the universality of the beach scene is recognizable in most cultures.

5. Art Hazelwood, "Parade. Hong Kong," 1995 woodcut, 178 x 241 mm, from the series Walking Up and Down in Asia (Collection of Artist).

Many of the other prints in this series also demonstrate Hazelwood's focus on white space that he displays in "Thai Beach." In "Parade, Hong Kong (fig. 5)," tourists take pictures of a dignitary. The white outline of her costume, in contrast to the hatched garments of the girls carrying flags and the musicians behind her, make her the focal point for the viewer as well as for the tourists who have their cameras raised to their faces and appear like androids, with their growing appendages of technology.

In a radical departure from the woodcut, Hazelewood's next three projects involve visual interpretation of literary works. His choice of literary texts demonstrates Hazelwood's growing political concerns.[12]

"As the relationship between the individual and his government grows more complex and the very nature of social and political organization is transformed in many nations, other issues arise. For five hundred years artist have taken up burin or needle or pen to portray injustice and inequity. It is most likely that there will continue to be artists of sufficient compassion and skill to carry on that honorable tradition of the indignant eye with artistic relevancy and integrity."[13]

6. Art Hazelwood, "Fetid Wind, 2001, linocut and etching, 305 x 457 mm, from the series Gargantua in the Vineyards, Eastside Editions (Stanford University Library, Special Collections).

7. Art Hazelwood, "Blown Away," 2001, linocut and etching, 305 x 457 mm, from the series Gargantua in the Vineyards, Eastside Editions (Stanford University Library, Special Collections).

Gargantua in the Vineyards (2001) is a large color print, consisting of a linocut over two etching plates that measures 12 x 180 inches and folded into an accordion book that was published by Eastside Editions on paper, handmade in the studio.[14] This project was aimed at storytelling within the format of an extended image that he experimented with earlier in his print, "Parade." The content of this panel focuses on a literary text. The fifteen-foot panel is made up of ten different prints that provide Hazelwood's interpretation of Rabelais's Gargantua , when a monk, with the aid of Gargantua, takes revenge on a pillaging army that destroyed his vineyards.[15]

"Gargantua in the Vineyards is a work that combines etching and linoleum cut. The most common way I have seen to combine these media is to use the natural advantages of each. The fine line possible with etching and the large plains of overlapping colors of relief prints can each be used to their advantage. I decided to go the opposite direction by using aquatint to create the background colors and by using the relief for the line work. The main reason for doing so was that I had come to etching after years of doing woodcuts, and I had developed an attachment to the bold line of the relief print. So, in this case, the linoleum cut was used for the line work, while the etching served as the source of color."[16]

Rabelais' gusto for living, ribald humor and his scorn for convention provide the perfect vehicle for Hazelwood's graphic skill and philosophical inquiry.

"Hazelwood's scenes set before us the dissonance between the pompous authority figures whom Rabelais lampoons and the out-sized heroes themselves, whose very bodies frequently become the stage where the tales are enacted. His images overlap and intertwine on several planes at once. They suggest both the zoom-like leaps of Rabelais's narrative, as it shifts location and context from episode to episode."[17]

What is visible, on the first inspection of the individual prints, is the dramatic detail of figures and images and the role that color plays in this striking display. The colors are bold and sharp and do not bleed into one another, which makes the lines in the prints more striking and provide a visual ease as the narrative unfolds.

To appreciate the power of Hazelwood's narrative these prints should be viewed in the entire, scrolling form.[18] The use of analogous color in these prints, the migration of figures and objects from one print to the next print, and the actions of Gargantua—such as when he is holding a vat of wine in his hand, blowing away the monk's enemies, or catching a bunch of grapes inside his mouth—provides points of narrative continuity.

A development from his earlier work is Hazelwood's attention to detail that is apparent in the expressions of his characters like Gargantua's bulging cheeks (fig. 6) as he blows away the soldiers, politicians, and clergy. The fury of this action is shown clearly in the detail of these figures, such as the gas mask stretched off the face of a soldier, the grasping fingers of the politician as he reaches into the air for an object to stop his acceleration, the bulbous robe of the academician (fig. 7) and the cleric's headdress spinning forward like a gun shell into the last print.

The layers of action, large dimensions, and expert use of color in this series marked Hazelwood, at this junction in his career, as a skilled printmaker with a distinct vision. His self-assurance boldly steps forward in his next projects.

In his next work, Requiem for Dionysos (2003), Hazelwood continues his interpretation of a literary theme in another accordion book of color linocuts. There are five images created from four individual linoblocks measuring 24" x 18" that is based on The Bacchae of Euripides and the conflict between order and madness. The images are labeled: "Prophet," "Tocsin," "The King," "Sanctimony," and "Requiem." A quote from The Bacchae accompanies each image and further displays Hazelwood's growing political tone that begins to form a base for his commitment to the vital nature of the print and printmaking's historical role in social criticism.

8. Art Hazelwood, " Tocsin. You are a man to make men fear. Fearful will be your end," 2003, woodcut and linocut, 610 x 457 mm, from the series Requiem For Dionysos (Saint Mary's College of California).

"Religion and socialism have, if you like the word, "used" printmaking for their respective purposes, but printmaking has certainly used religion and socialism just as much. The use of both for the purposes of the print derives partly because both historically have created a widely held body of beliefs within which an artist can address himself to a large number of people, but even more because both religion and socialism are, from one point of view, criticism of the way things are; and it is criticism, in the widest sense, that seems to be the genius of printmaking."[19]

The images in these prints are directly related to America's war on terrorism, following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. During a period of fear and unbridled patriotism,[20] concern over the growing power of the Bush administration and the lessening of personal freedom became a focus for daring cartoonists and graphic artists.[21] Hazelwood's focus with this series encourages parallels between Euripides' Greek king, who only understands force to use against his enemies, and President George W. Bush and his war on terrorism.

The first unsettling image in this series depicts a warship in a harbor. A man, in the foreground, holds his head inside a television set. Hazelwood visual imagery, in this series, reflects television and newspapers reports. This imagery includes pictures of prisoner abuse (fig. 8), military force suggested by looming fighter jets, investors in the war depicted by the figure of a businessman kneeling at the feet of the king, a caricature of Osama bin Laden bound with ropes to two civilians, and more imaginative and dream-like symbolism and figures like a female violinist playing for the public on stage with severed bodies at her feet.

In addition to these disturbing images, Hazelwood's growing confidence and skill with color is seen in this series of blood reds, blinding gold and washed out blues that support his themes on death, avarice and his scorn of the public attitude of indecisiveness.

9. Art Hazelwood, "Take Off," 2004, color etching with a linocut border, 406 x 330 mm, published in Journeys to the Moon and Sun by Cyrano de Bergerac, Eastside Editions. (courtesy of the artist)

Hazelwood's third project of prints on a literary theme is based on the book, Journeys to the Moon and Sun by Cyrano de Bergerac with twelve color etchings with linocut borders and twelve pages of text in a new translation by Timothy Hampton from the original French edition of 1662. This lively translation works hand-in-hand with Hazelwood's illustrations (fig. 9), which are comparable to the illustrations of the American book illustrator Howard Pyle with his bold colors and stylized figures. This imaginative interim from the previous two highly political works demonstrates the versatility of Hazelwood's draftsmanship in stylized borders that are reminiscent of the border designs by Aubrey Beardsley and William Morris.

Hazelwood's growing social and political concerns[22] took aim on the war in Iraq with his most important series of prints to date called Hubris Corpulentus described as "a state of obscene, overweening pride that produces monstrous realities out of the stupor of irrationality."[23] This series of ten engravings was first exhibited at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco on January 15-February 28, 2004 with continuous showings across the country.[24] Hazelwood explains his feeling about the war and his artistic expression in these prints.

"After it became clear that nothing would stop the US march to war in Iraq, and my sense of frustration mounted, the only course that seemed open was to channel despair into small concise statements. Engraving seemed like the best way to focus. It is a laborious process: a method of cutting a metal plate with tools to create an image. The minuteness, obsessiveness and control required were the perfect match for my wish to focus anger at details of this monumentally hubristic war."[25]

These prints are truly distinct and are reminiscent of Hogarth and Goya's satirical look at the atrocities of war with the great draftsmanship and fantasy of Heinrich Kley. Hazelwood joins a tradition of artists who "trash our masks and patriotic finery, shibboleths and platitudes, and look beneath."[26]

10. Art Hazelwood, "Four Horsemen ," 2003, engraving, 146 x 197 mm, from the series Hubris Corpulentus (Collection of the Artist).

Hazelwood has stepped from conjecture in his previous series of prints to an "in-your-face" straightforwardness in his message that includes the apocalyptic theme of the "Four Horsemen," (fig. 10) who ride over the landscape where war protestors gather and "Liberty Brought to Baghdad," where a bound and gagged woman spreads her wings to shade two soldiers, lounging and eating a meal (fig. 11). With this series, Hazelwood also moved away from woodcut and linocut into metal engraving. Hazelwood used the plates and tools of Daniel Robeski and William Wolff, while he was cataloging the works of these two significant printmakers.[27]

11. Art Hazelwood, " Liberty Brought To Baghdad, " 2003, engraving, 146 x 197 mm, from the series Hubris Corpulentus (Collection of the Artist).

"I basically taught myself the technique of metal engraving with this series. The great thing about the engraving on metal is that it forces one to be very patient. You can't rush a line. And you have to vary the pressure from the lightest touch to a fairly strong hand, although always with decorum, as it were, or it skips or gouges. The zinc was not very easy to work with and only one of the images is on zinc… "Liberty Brought to Baghdad." I used an electric dremel tool on that one as well, since the zinc doesn't take a cut quite as well as the copper or brass. The brass is quite a bit harder but that is nice sometimes since it is easier to work a light surface on it."[28]

One of the more effective prints, "Romance," displays sensual female bodies seductively lounging and rubbing up against artillery guns, pointing high in the air (fig. 12). " I believe if one looks around at the culture one sees romanticized violence and sexualized war, and that is what I am attacking."[29] The phallic innuendo of the guns and sensual nature of the women places the entire impression of this war in another category and makes it appear, as the Bush and Blair administrations have hoped, nothing more than an erotic television commercial.

12 . Art Hazelwood, " Romance of War ," 2003, engraving, 152 x 229 mm, from the series Hubris Corpulentus (Collection of the Artist).

This print displays the machismo relationship between guns and sex, which has been a successful advertising ploy used by gun manufacturers. In direct contrast to this dreamy image of naked bodies leisurely preparing to load a shell in the artillery cannon is the oasis where the cannon is positioned. This location appears more like a resort with lush foliage. The occurrence of gas masks on the women makes them collectively anonymous and keeps the focus on their bodies. This war in Iraq seems nothing more than an advertising shoot of sexy models draped over artillery. What makes this print so powerful is what is not displayed, such as the reality of the fatalities that results from exploding artillery shells. The artillery is aimed at the towers in a distant city so civilian casualties are imminent. The unreality of this print makes the stark reality of death and destruction certain.

From his bold, primitive woodcuts and color illustrations to his engravings, Hazelwood demonstrates the skill of a printmaker who has successfully combined his creative nature with a dynamic scorn for the abuse of power and the wishy-washy attitude about the casualties of war displayed by the Bush administration.

In the Durer print that I mentioned at the beginning of my essay, there is not a cheering crowd on the side of the road where the Knight travels because the expression of truth is not always favorable, especially when it is not what the majority of the public wishes to see. Perhaps, just as important as Hazelwood's vision is the expression of that vision in our contemporary society.

"Others again, a considerably greater number of artists, propound a vision as individual as is their choice of the medium in the first place, simple, low-tech yet responsive. Their non-conformity consists not so much in the vision as in a more basic refusal to give up or to give in."[30]

Art Hazelwood is such a printmaker whose vital contemporary force in the graphic arts and reputation for the effective use of images, especially with Hubris Corpulentus , assures him a firm place in print history.

Notes

[1] Art Hazelwood. Raison d'être Statement . March, 2003. Enclosed in letter to author December 21, 2003.

[2] Hazelwood, Raison .

[3] Art Hazelwood. Promenade: A Voyeur's Guide to America . San Francisco, Epigone Press. 1994: [3].

[4]American Prints from Wood: An Exhibition of Woodcuts and Wood Engravings Organized by Jane M. Farmer . Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975: [9].

[5] Lynd Ward. Storyteller Without Words: The Wood engravings of Lynd Ward . New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1974: 15-16.

[6] The conventional content of these woodcuts by Henry Glintenkamp does not represent the general tone of his work. Glintenkamp was a radical printmaker whose woodcuts, in contrast to this travel log, displayed the social injustices of his era.

[7] See Helen Langa's Radical Art: Printmaking and the Left in 1930s New York (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004) for an examination of these and other radical printmakers.

[8] In addition to his painting and printmaking, Hazelwood has worked, during the last ten years, for the "Street Sheet," which is a newspaper on the San Francisco homeless.

[9] Art Hazelwood. Home page. <http://www.arthazelwood.com/info.htm> (accessed March 1, 2004).

[10] Mark Dinneen. Brazilian Woodcut Prints . London: Kegan Paul, 2001: 12.

[11] Art Hazelwood. Forest Song . San Francisco: Epigone Press, 1995.

[12] Around this same time, Hazelwood began his outdoor acrylic paint mural, "Modern Muses and the Arts," that measures 5.5 feet tall and 110 feet long. It is located across from the entrance to the Vallejo Community Arts Foundation, in Vallejo, California. Work began in October 1999 and finished in February 2000. Hazelwood was the designer and painter of the mural with assistance from Susan Tirre, Daniel Robeski and Yumiko Masuzawa.

[13] Ralph E. Shikes, The Indignant Eye: The Artist as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Centry to Picasso . Boston: Beacon Press, 1969: 406.

[14] First established in 2000 in Sonoma, California by Simon Blattern, Eastside Editions and studio represents Blattner's "passion for the world of handmade paper" (Eastside Editions. <http://eastsideeditions.com/index.html> accessed September 5, 2004).

[15] First published in 1532 as a chapbook collection of tales about the folk giant, Gargantua: Les grandes et inestimables cronicques du grand et énorme géant Gargantua extended into five books that established Rabelais as the writer of biting satire with a passion for life. Hazelwood's first two series of woodcut were printed in inexpensive chapbook editions.

[16] Art Hazelwood. "Gargantua and the Book," The California Printmaker . CSP Journal 2002: 37. In this article, Hazelwood discusses, in detail, the technical problems he had in the creation of this print, such as registering the different media and using a different ground "made of Future Floor Wax mixed with food dye," with his etching. In addition to the technical innovations, the collaborative effort is examined between Hazelwood, East Side Editions' owner and publisher Simon Blattner, and Klaus Rötzscher at the Pettingell Book Bindery in Berkeley, California.

[17] Timothy Hampton. "Gargantua in the Vineyard." Art Hazelwood. Home page. <http://arthazelwood.com/prints/rabelais/Rabelaistext.htm> (accessed June 6, 2004).

[18] See <http://arthazelwood.com/prints/rabelais/Scroll.htm> for the full linear view of these prints.

[19] Frank and Dorothy Getlein. The Bite of the Print: Satire and Irony in Woodcuts, Engavings, Etchings, Lithographs and Serigraphs . New York: Bramhall House, 1962: 266.

[20] Flag sales tripled in the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attack and it was a common sight, throughout the United States, to see American flags hung from homes, buildings, bridges, and car antennas.

[21] Perhaps no other group of graphic artists attacks the growing power of the Bush administration and its tenets that has isolated the United States from her NATO allies and indirectly sanctioned abuses like the immoral treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib, than World War 3 Illustrated . This contemporary magazine, equivalent in scope to the early twentieth century leftist magazines like The New Masses , was launched by graphic artists Seth Tobocman and Peter Kuper in New York City in 1979.

[22] Hazelwood's print posters supports organizations like the Coalition on Homelessness that publishes a newspaper called the "Street Sheet." This newspaper is sold by the homeless and contains news and stories about the conditions of the homeless in the San Francisco area.

[23] Art Hazelwood. Home page. <http://www.arthazelwood.com/prints/Hubris/Hubris.htm> (accessed May 5, 2004).

[24] Prints from Hubris Corpulentus was exhibited in 2004 at Saint Mary's College of California Gallery, Moraga, California; The Gallery of Social and Political Art, Boston, Massachusetts; Mitchell Place Gallery, Muncie, Indiana; Mount San Jacinto College Gallery, San Jacinto, California; and the Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, California.

[25] Art Hazelwood. Home page. <http://www.arthazelwood.com/prints/Hubris/Hubris.htm> (accessed March 19, 2004).

[26] DeWitt Cheng. "Hubris Corpulentus: Prints by Art Hazelwood." The California Printmaker News Brief , Spring 2004: [4].

[27] Hazelwood wanted to dedicate these prints to printmakers Daniel Robeski (1951-2002) and William Wolff (1922-2004). Hazelwood commented that Wolff was very "enthusiastic" with this series. (Email dated March 12, 2004).

[28] Art Hazelwood, Question, email to author, March 12, 2004.

[29] Art Hazelwood. Home page. <http://www.arthazelwood.com/articles.htm> (accessed May 3, 2004).

[30] Simon Brett. An Engraver's Globe: Wood Engraving World-Wide in the Twenty-First Century . London: Promrose Hill Press, 2002: 24.

David Berona is Library's Director of the Plymouth State University (Plymouth, New Hampshire)

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