The Log Boom c. 1924

Hans Kleiber made this etching, The Log Boom, at some point in his career, and it's a dance of dark lines on a light ground. It looks like he’s scratching into the plate with a drypoint needle, letting the burr of the metal create those soft, velvety blacks. You can see the artmaking as a process, each line a decision, a little tremor in the artist's hand. The surface shimmers with these marks. The logs themselves are solid, but they break up into little hatch marks, like a code. Check out the reflections in the water – they’re not exact copies, but squiggly, alive. And the figures on the logs, they’re so small, almost lost in the landscape, but they’re there, doing their thing. The whole thing feels honest. This piece reminds me a bit of Whistler's etchings, that same attention to mood and atmosphere. But Kleiber has his own thing going on, a kind of ruggedness, like the Wyoming landscape he loved. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that art is not about perfection, but about feeling your way through the world.