Wood cheer

Carol Santora makes colorful scenes

by Leon Nigrosh

THE PRINTMAKING ART OF CAROL SANTORA At Surroundings Gallery, 377 Main Street, Gardner, through July 17.

Tucked away in the North County town of Gardner, Surroundings Gallery is a tiny gem of an gallery. It's housed in a former livery stable built in 1880. Its rough-hewn post and beam interior beautifully frames the pristine white walls on which more than 30 woodcut prints by Carol Santora currently hang.

Santora herself hails from nearby Westminster, where for the past 15 years she has been producing art, concentrating on wood block-printmaking. She employs several different printmaking methods, from the Japanese ukiyo-e style of multiple blocks, to the jigsaw method, and the reductive method of using one block for all the colors in a particular print. Although she often hand rubs individual prints, all of the works in this exhibit were pulled from an antique Poco proof press. To help visitors understand the different tools and methods, Santora has a display case in this exhibit showing actual tools with concise written explanations of how they are employed.

Her series Fisherman's Catch presents an excellent example of just how the reductive technique works. Because only a few marks are cut into the original block, the first print is densely black, with an interesting, but barely discernible image. More marks are cut into the same block to create stage two, in which we can see a large fish mouth and eyes emerging from a swirl of bubbles.

Because each successive carving obliterates the previous image, Santora pulls several sheets of each stage before continuing. The third version of the print contains much more detail, with thin lines and greater definition. Stage four combines all of the earlier steps to produce a vivid, four-color portrait of a fish shimmering in the depths. Her Merchant Mariner series is presented in the same manner, with all four stages shown next to each other, each version becoming more complex until the final stage, wherein we see the sailor in his bearded glory.

Santora also uses the reductive method to produce a series of architecturally oriented prints of stacked houses, which could be taken as either Swiss chalets or Fitchburg row houses. The images in the red, white, and black Clandestine Metropolis III move from implied housing to simple patterns of color and line -- and back again, creating intricate figure/ground relationships similar to many of M.C. Escher's ambiguous woodcuts.

The print Hall of Mirrors, Versailles, I shows a series of arches in sharp perspective rendered starkly in black and white. A fine example of Santora's architectural style by itself, it is but the first stage in a multiple block print that culminates in the bright red and yellow four-color print Egress to Mars and the Olive Branches. Here the artist puts her colors to good use, creating rich surface textures while developing a greater sense of grandeur within the Gothic vaulted concourse.

Also on display is a group of small landscapes, seascapes, and florals produced by using the jigsaw method. This particular printing technique allows the artist to have many more colors in a single image. A design is drawn onto a block, which is then cut into the appropriate pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece is separately inked, the pieces are reassembled, and the entire plate is printed at once. Both the Palm Tree and the related sun-drenched tree in Morning are good examples of how much color and shaded tonality can be introduced in a single image using this method.

Another tiny print, Picket Fence, uses what is not there to good effect. Here Santora offers us a verdant landscape cut in half by a bright white fence. In reality, she has removed the piece of wood meant to represent the fence, allowing the white paper to cleave the brightly colored foliage.

Whether Santora is making the images just discussed or has musical notes floating across G and F clef staffs, or ethereal faces emerging from behind architectural structures, all of her work is straightforward, with no fancy stuff, and is easy to read and to enjoy.

The gallery is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call (978) 630-2340.