Untitled (Man Gathering Rock From Seashore, With Ox-Cart) c. 1930

Curator: Alright, so looking at this print, a woodcut actually, made by Homer Boss around 1930, what strikes you first? It's titled “Untitled (Man Gathering Rock From Seashore, With Ox-Cart)”. Editor: Immediately, I feel this weighty stillness. It's black and white, so stark, and yet that ox looks like it's carved from marble—like a god forced into labour. Curator: You see the divine in the mundane? It is interesting how he rendered that ox. The figure of the man laboring definitely speaks to me of work. Look at how he uses these really simple tools, yet they still convey such emotion. Editor: Absolutely. And the way the woodcut captures texture—those pebbles on the shore become this endless field of dark and light. It makes me think of Sisyphus, eternally pushing his boulder, except here it's smaller rocks but the labour feels just as monumental. A meditation on unending tasks? Curator: Interesting. The waves, the clouds even—everything seems horizontal. Is that contributing to your feelings of stasis? Do you get a feeling about the horizon here, the symbolic power? Editor: Oh, definitely. All those horizontals feel oppressive almost. That low, heavy sky… And then you see the ox, this hulking form, and it's like an anchor holding everything down. Ox as enduring strength, but also enduring burden. Curator: Woodcuts, prints of any kind I guess, are inherently repetitive. Here, that feels built into the theme—that repeated labour, repeated marks creating this image of unending work... the way the prints get made parallels the life the work is reflecting. Editor: It all comes back to the inherent connection. Yes, there's something profound in the cyclical nature of it. The sea, the sky, the gathering, the carting, the rocks... All part of the eternal grind. You see that same theme echoed through history in so many different stories! The hero, the quest, the toil... and Boss finds it right here, on a shore. Curator: Yes! Okay, Homer Boss. Thank you for this tiny meditation on life. Editor: Yes. Thank you, indeed. The weight of the world visualized so economically. Powerful stuff.