Bright Angel Trail [blue block] 1919

Gustave Baumann made this block print, Bright Angel Trail, using wood, I imagine, some gouges, and a whole lotta blue. He’s working subtractively, right? Carving away at the block. It must have been a meditative process, almost sculptural. I can imagine him standing over his work, the Grand Canyon abstracted into the grain of the wood. He’s thinking about the light there, how it falls, picking out the edges. That blue! It’s not just a color; it's a mood, a feeling of depth, of the air itself pressing down. He picks out the trail with a slash of green, pulling you down into the scene. I love thinking about how artists like Baumann are connected across time. They’re wrestling with the same problems—how to capture a feeling, a place, the weight of the world, in a way that sings. They’re talking to each other, across generations, through the language of making.