Spillway 1936

This is a woodblock print of "Spillway" made by Arnold Wiltz in July 1936. Just imagine the labor of carving all those tiny bricks that compose the spillway, one by one, a little bit at a time. It seems like the kind of slow, meditative task that lets you really get inside the subject matter. There's something about the contrast between the rigidity of the structure and the softness of the sky that I find really captivating. It's like Wiltz is trying to capture something about the way humans interact with nature, imposing order on chaos, but also respecting its power and beauty. I think of the artist as being in conversation with all sorts of different aesthetic ideas. It’s a process of exchanging ideas across time, inspiring one another’s creativity. What do you see?