Eerie Grotto? Okini

Description

William Wiley's "Eerie Grotto? Okini" is a view of a studio interior strewn with artist's implements as well as strange objects, like the hatchet with red and blue blade. Carefully drawn and brightly colored, this image suggests an impulse to create a harmonious world out of disparate elements, an effort to create rationality from the absurd. Both the subject matter and the careful composition recall this San Francisco artist's background making constructions form objects during the 1970s. This work also attests Wiley's skill as a printmaker: made from twenty-six separate wood blocks, the print is a marvel of perfect registration. Its delicacy of execution pushes the woodcut technique to resemble pen drawing and watercolor.