The Old Print Shop

Don Gorvett

b. 1949

Don Gorvett is a graduate of the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA.  He has for many years served as a board member for the Boston Printmakers and received an Honorary Life Time Achievement Award in the Arts from Salem State University, Salem, MA.  Gorvett has led workshops & lectured on the Reduction Woodcut process at Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA; Salem State College, Salem, MA; University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, and others.  

His work is in the collections of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. MA; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA; the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA; the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Ogunquit, ME; the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH; the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; among others.

"My goal regarding the use of the one-block reduction woodcut method is to free the medium from a sometimes unavoidable stagnant appearance.  This technique of woodcut allows one to weave and integrate line and color in a rhythmic painterly way, thus creating in effect a tapestry."  -Don Gorvett

WHAT IS A REDUCTION WOODCUT?
The multi-color reduction woodcut is the process whereby all of the colors are printed from a single plank of wood.  The “edition,” or number of prints, must be determined beforehand, since the overlay or preservation of prior colors will be achieved by the gradual destruction of the block.  One cannot retreat during the process.  The result is that the finished prints can not be reproduced in any kind beyond the original determined number of prints.  -Don Gorvett, Woodcuts & Drawings

Video: Don Gorvett on the reduction wood cut process.

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