Midwest Modern: Mabel Hewit at The Cleveland Museum of Art

As everyone in the art world knows, the Cleveland Museum of Art has been undergoing a massive renovation that began in 2005. Since then we’ve enjoyed a number of unveilings and re-openings of galleries. The most recent was the re-opening of the galleries in the lower level of the 1916 building. Here we find the new CMA prints and drawings galleries. To inaugurate these galleries, the Cleveland Museum of Art is currently featuring a little-known Cleveland artist in Midwest Modern: The Color Woodcuts of Mabel Hewit. Mabel Hewit was born in Conneaut, OH in 1903 and raised in Youngstown, OH. She spent the last 50 years of her life in Cleveland producing beautifully colored prints of city life during the Depression and the years following. The vibrancy of color and the modern focus of geometric form found in these prints present this era as a period filled with icons of strength and stability despite the hardship.

The exhibition includes lithographs, sketches, and textiles, but most prominent are the woodblock prints that highlight Hewit’s white-line woodcut technique. Learned while in Provincetown, Massachusetts from Blanche Lazzell, this technique allows the artist to separate sections of the woodblock with grooves and ink each section with different colors separately before printing. The grooves are not inked and the result is a print that retains the white embossed line separating the brilliant colors of the print. This technique also results in a beautiful woodblock, itself a sculpted piece. Midwest Modern includes a number of Hewit’s woodblocks in the show, many of which include images on both sides of the block.

Formally, Hewit’s woodcuts, with their focus on the lines and the flatness of spaces easily point to an influence in Cubism, Precissionism, and Art Deco. Her teacher Lazzell said Cubism was the “organization of flat planes of color, with an interplay of space instead of perspective.” The white-line technique allowed Hewit to explore these formal elements of color and space. But Hewit’s subjects, as much as form is most endearing to this viewer. It is the emphasis of some of life’s simple pleasures and the refusal to be disheartened Hewit’s prints share with the ukiyo-e woodblocks that are most pleasing.


Hewitt’s woodcuts from about 1933 depict scenes of Provincetown, similar Lazzell’s prints. The exhibition also includes landscapes from her travels to Mexico, Guatemala, and the West Indies. Though it is her industrial landscapes and scenes of everyday life closer to home that inspire. These prints monumentalize iconic images from the Depression Era. Along with the factories and gable-roofed houses of the Midwestern landscape, a newsboy, sandwich men, and boys playing baseball stand as strong symbols of stability and even hope during the 1930s. Like Grant Wood’s celebration of rural America, Hewit reveals the strength in the industrial Midwest and the white line technique of her woodblocks emphasizes this stability. Even pedestrians in The Storm from about 1935 are unnerved.

Midwest Modern: The Color Woodcuts by Mabel Hewit is a perfect inaugural installation for the prints and drawings galleries. Recognizing a local printmaker whose work features recognizable industrial landscapes and scenes of everyday life is fitting. By doing so, the Cleveland Museum of Art simultaneously recognizes the art traditions of printmaking and drawing and the art history of Northeast Ohio. Further, the geometric emphasis of her prints echo the forms found in the newly opening Egyptian galleries nearby. The interplay of the fundamentals of art, history, community, and culture in the 1916 galleries reflects the beautiful integration of style and subject of Mabel Hewit’s white-line technique woodcuts.

-Kathy Stockman

Midwest Modern: The Color Woodcuts by Mabel Hewit is on view in the new 1916 Building Prints and Drawings Galleries at the Cleveland Museum of Art now through October 24, 2010

Pictured Above: Sun Bathing, 1937. Mabel Hewit (American, 1903–1984). Color woodcut; 27.7 x 30.3 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Jurey in memory of Mabel A. Hewit 2003.362 Print © Mabel Hewit

Pictured below: The Storm, about 1935. Mabel Hewit (American, 1903–1987). Color woodcut; 27.6 x 22.7 cm. Mr. and Mrs. William Jurey Print © Mabel Hewit

In Memoriam: Thom Shaw

I was out of town, actually out of reach of internet, when artist Thom Shaw died in early July, but my Facebook mail was full of the news on my return. Death is always a surprise, even after lengthy, brave fights for health as was the case with Thom, but what I thought of immediately was an exchange we had on my return to journalism after a long time away.

It seemed strange, just then, to be back in the writing business. I felt as though I was starting all over again. When an early assignment brought me in touch with Thom I said “I don’t know if you remember me. . .” only be to have him cut me off. “Remember you! Of course I remember you! You were the first person to write something about me. I’ve got it with me now,” and he pulled from his wallet a badly creased newspaper clipping. “I carry it with me all the time.”

So – my writing about Thom let him know that he was noticed. His remembering me let me know I hadn’t been forgotten. It was an exchange that still brings warmth in memory,
If mine was first public notice of Thom Shaw’s art, I don’t think what I’ve written here will be the last. His strong, compelling work will have a life beyond that allotted to him.

-Jane Durrell

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Michael Willett: Lost and Found

The artist in transition is in a special place. No longer tied to the works of the past but still nurturing its successes, the artist seeks new frontiers and avenues of exploration and expression. These are the moments when worlds collide, overlap, envelope, and eventually give rise to something new and decisive. Frequently this metamorphosis occurs outside of the public view in the private spaces that are mind, home, or studio, but on rare occasions, whether in exhibitions or privileged meetings, we are invited to witness this process fist hand. Such is the case with Michael Willett’s new show at the Fitton Center.

Part of a larger group exhibit dubbed “Floating”, Willett’s new work is, as transitions often are, derived from that which is at hand. Found objects are organized, arranged, and interpreted in this show which makes use of tidy lines and saturated color. The arrangement is spare, if not altogether Spartan, and yet the vast areas of open space allow the individual pieces breathing room. In Untitled (Atlantic 45) (2010), a large work of paint and cut vinyl that stems from the sleeve of (obviously) an old Atlantic 45, the viewer is confronted with a simplicity of form and color that hearkens back to some of the geometric and minimal movements of the early 1960s. For having such an unadorned approach to composition and color harmony Untitled (Atlantic 45) has a surprising amount of visual “force” behind it. Of the works on view, (Atlantic 45) does come closest to straightforward reproduction of the original found object. While not necessarily bad, there is a danger in this approach in that it the work itself is no longer endowed with self generating meaning, but rather acts as a trigger to a meaning that exists outside of the image and resides (in a preconceived manner) within the viewer, or in the object from which it originates.

In Untitled (81 Circles/Designs + 14 Circles/Designs) the color is slightly less restricted and significantly more playful. A diptych that samples the imagery of found vinyl advertisement, (81 Circles/Designs + 14 Circles/Designs) pushes a unit based approach to composition that also pays homage to minimalist technique. There is an engaging contrast here between the dense 81 circles on canvas, and the austere 14 circles composed directly on the gallery wall. The tension between painting as object and painting as “window” present in the work is a pleasant reaffirmation that all that is needed for a surface to establish itself as pictorial is a delineated edge.

Willett’s previous major body of work has been highly invested in installation and site specificity. In this current exhibition, he is clearly adapting the tools, materials, and technique of his previous production to something more object based. If this new work is any indication, Michael Willett’s next major body will be something considerable indeed.

-Alan D. Pocaro


“Floating" at the Fitton Center for Creative Art 101 South Monument Avenue Hamilton, OH 45011-2833
Through August 6th.
Photos: Above, Untitled (Atlantic 45) Hand-cut vinyl advertisements and acrylic on wall, Dimensions variable, 2010.
Below, Untitled (81 Circles/Designs + 14 Circles/Designs) Hand-cut vinyl advertisements and acrylic on canvas and wall, 36"x75", 2010.

Thom Shaw, Cincinnati Artist, dies July 6

One of Greater Cincinnati's best-known and versatile artists, Thom Shaw, was a pioneer African-American leader, probably best known for his gritty, urban-derived woodcuts. His one-man exhibition of these woodcuts at the Cincinnati Art Museum was a breakthrough both for the Art Museum, as it began to expand into exhibiting artists from diverse backgrounds, as well as for all artists of different backgrounds and genders. The exhibition was the culmination of a long career, with much yet to come.
His paintings were first shown at the Miller Gallery in the 1970s; they were derived from jazz music, and were called the 'Debejamming Series,' and were large, colorful geometric abstracts. Concurrently, Shaw began to show his woodcuts at the Closson Gallery downtown. His most recent exhibition, dealing with a recent surgery, were shown at Art Beyond Boundaries last year.
Shaw was a founding member of the group Umoja, whose artists mentored all incoming african-american freshman at the Art Academy, as well as seeking exhibition opportunities for mature african-american artists in area institutions.  He was, at one time, the Duncanson Artist in Residence at the Taft Museum. He was long employed by Cincinnati Bell.
His legacy is a rich one and the art, and his presence, will long live beyond him. He was a good friend to many of us.

- Daniel Brown

Services for Thom Shaw will be held Saturday, July 17 at Greater New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Avondale.  3655 Harvey Ave. Visitation: 11-12;  Service: noon.