Walter-Winch-Bug 1950

This is W. Iler’s Walter-Winch-Bug, made with what I imagine to be cut blocks and ink on paper. It’s a teeming landscape where the artist coaxes figures and forms out of simple marks. I can picture Iler carving away at the block, a process of reduction and revelation. What was he thinking as he made this? The print is teeming with life and with a healthy disrespect for gravity. A surreal, almost feverish quality, like a dream you can’t quite shake. The marks have a handmade quality, all rough edges and happy accidents, with a world of characters. It reminds me a bit of other visionaries like William Blake, who also used printmaking to channel his own personal mythology. But Iler’s got his own thing going on here. It makes you wonder what he’d make next, what other kinds of creatures and worlds were brewing in his imagination. Iler, like all artists, reminds us that art is a conversation across time, a dialogue between makers and viewers. It's an embodied expression that embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple interpretations, a space where anything is possible.