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In a small iowa town, two woodcut printers with distinctly different techniques have created a collaborative studio environment with singular results.

Considering they have worked closely together in the studio for five years, it is surprising that woodcut artists Ann Klingensmith and Lennis Moore of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, approach their craft from perspectives that seem almost diametrically opposed. As quick to point out the differences in their work as they are to extol the benefits of their cooperative efforts, the two illustrate the ways in which working artists can inform and aid one another without appropriating imagery or imitating technique.

Klingensmith uses a reductive printmaking method. Working with a single block of wood, she carves more and more surface area as the print progresses, leaving smaller and smaller areas to run through her press. Moore, on the other hand, carves a new block of wood for each color area, only rarely printing more than one color from a single block.

Moore's prints, which tend to be highly graphic, representational images of landscapes and people, exploit the texture of the wooden printing block and rely on high contrast. The result is spare, powerful images evocative of the Midwestern landscape where he lives. In contrast, Klingensmith's imaginative, painterly images evolve from what she laughingly calls "head stuff." Her recent preoccupation with dogs as subject matter, for example, has less to do with things canine than with the interplay of color, light, shape, and "the inherent properties of carved wood in relief," she explains. "The dogs are just props. They could be people or anything, really," she says. "They could be bowling balls," Moore offers.

In their training and professional experience as well as in their artwork, the two artists come from opposite poles. Moore studied art as an undergraduate at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and his work grew out of a long tradition of Northeast Iowa printmakers from the Luther College area who had been influenced by woodcut printmaker Orville Running. After graduation, Moore worked as an art teacher and participated as a studio artist in a cooperative, later moving to Mt. Pleasant, where he maintains his printmaking studio and works as the administrator for the Midwest Old Thresher's Association (the association operates a museum and organizes an annual festival dedicated to agricultural history).

Klingensmith received M.A. and M.F.A. degrees in printmaking from the University of Iowa in Iowa City and is now a tenured faculty member at Iowa Wesleyan College in Mt. Pleasant. As an undergraduate at Graceland College in Lamoni, Iowa, Klingensmith says she learned printmaking on her own; she read every book she could find on the subject, and asked advice from professors as she developed her own techniques.

Now, with Moore, she is continuing a similar form of professional development. The printmakers often work side by side, but the prints they produce are very much their own. "I've been standing by the press when Ann has pulled some of her best prints, and Ann has been standing by the press when I've pulled some of mine," Moore says. As a fellow artist familiar with the creative process in printmaking, he says, "you appreciate what it took to get that finished image and you don't feel so isolated. Sometimes we work for several hours in the studio and exchange only three or four words, including 'hello' and 'goodbye.' But working together allows us to share ideas, to be influenced and changed in what we do with our art."

In a town of eight thousand in rural Iowa, such a collaboration is not easy to come by. Other studio artists live in the area, but few share a similar investment (of either energy or equipment) in the relief printmaking techniques so elemental to the work of these two printmakers. The two meet regularly to work on individual print editions in an environment conducive to technical advancement and aesthetic experimentation.

For Moore, a print image generally begins with a landscape he has viewed or photographed that ferments in his mind until he is ready to carve it into a relief print. He always makes an initial proof before printing an edition and generally has a clear idea when beginning of how he wants the finished piece to look. Because he employs an additive printing process, carving a new block for each color he prints, he can correct or the image as the print progresses.

Before carving, Moore prepares the surface of the wood by sanding it for smoothness and coating the entire block with a layer of India ink. When the ink dries, he draws the reverse image on the wood in white or yellow pencil. As he carves into the block, the darker stain remains as a contrast to the lighter color of the carved image, helping him visualize how each finished color run will look on paper.

Moore's images depend in part on the texture and roughness of the wood, and he says he carves with "anything that leaves a mark." Primarily, though, he uses long-handled gouges to carve his images, also employing a drill with wire brushes to remove larger areas of wood grain. "As the tree grows and the grains develop, there are harder and softer sections. The hard sections resist a wire brush or drill, and the soft ones are easy to remove," he explains. Moore likes the hardness and grain of birch plywood for his blocks. He primarily uses Hosho printing paper, which he cuts two and a half inches larger than thc dimensions of the pirating block, leaving a one-mid-a-quarter-inch border around thc printed image.

To register his prints, he has constructed a variety of registration jigs keyed for different paper sizes. Because he works with successive blocks, uniformity of dimension and the fit of each block into the right angle of the jig are important. Made of wood, the jig features a raised registration bar along the bottom that allows the one-and-a-quarter-inch margin at the border of the printing paper to slide underneath. A wooden dowel or pin inserted into the raised bar acts as a stop tab. When the paper is placed flush with the left side of the jig, the raised bar and stop tab maintain the desired margin around the image area and allow him to register subsequent colors.

After careful registration, Moore inks his block with a brayer and lays it carefully on top of the printing paper in the jig, using the dowel as a registration stop on the left and resting the bottom of the inked block along the top of the registration bar. The tack of the ink causes the print to adhere to the block. The artist then slides the paper and block out of the jig, flips them over, and carefully transports them to the press bed, where the pressure of the rollers imprints the ink onto the paper surface.

He uses two different presses to print his work: a hand-operated Challenge proof press he has nicknamed Little Darlin' and an electric Dickerson Combination Press known as Baby. Although he has worked with wooden spoons and barens as printing implements, Moore prefers the consistency of a press. His proof press was originally designed for newspaper work, but he says he makes it do "what it's not supposed to do." The Challenge press has a 14"-x-24" bed, and the Dickerson has a 27"-x-48" bed. He generally bases his choice of press on the size of his image area. He keeps his editions small, about sixty prints each at most. "Keeping the edition sizes low allows me to sell the prints more quickly so that I'm forced to do new work," he notes.

Moore likes to print successive colors while the ink is still slightly wet to allow some color mixing. He generally restricts himself to no more than four colors: one color on each of four carved wooden blocks in all. But in his recent work Late Summer Contours, he used eleven colors and applied several colors to various areas of each of the first three blocks, a technique employed regularly by Klingensmith. This print marks a departure for him in that he used more modulated colors, more translucent inks, and less high contrast. These changes, as well as his decision to print the last block of close detail in dark green ink alone to tie together the elements of the print, are indicative of Klingensmith's influence on his work.

Klingensmith's reductive printing process tends to be planned less in advance than Moore's--she begins with an idea and allows the print to evolve on the wooden block. Because she uses a single block for each print, she cannot go back and an area as Moore can by carving a new block. Adjustments to color and image must take place in successive color runs. Her prints generally use up to twelve colors, and she often applies more than one color to the printing block for each press run. For the last run, however, the artist typically uses one dark color to "pull together the whole image." She usually prefers to create her images on mahogany but uses birch plywood from time to time.

Her prints begin with an original graphite drawing placed on the wooden block. She then goes over this drawing with a black felt-tip marker and coats it with a layer of clear varnish. Sealed permanently into her printing block, this image will act as a guide for carving the various color runs of her print but will not offset onto the finished image.

The first colors Klingensmith lays down tend to be broad expanses of light shades such as ochre or pale green, with only a few lines or accent areas carved out. The lines of these first carvings will leave white, clean paper when the first run is printed. In the reductive process, the successive color runs overprint the first colors. But in areas where she carves new lines into the wood, the earlier colors show through. From that first run, she continues to remove the surface of the block, using gouges, a Dremel Moto-tool drill with variously sized bits that produce different varieties of line, a drill with a wire brush, and a propane torch. The torch allows her to soften small areas of the block surface before pulling the softer grain out with the wire brush or drill; this technique raises the grain in the wood surface. She also lays heavy paper stencils over adjoining areas of the printing block during the inking process, which allows her to butt two different colors of ink against one another in a single press run.

Klingensmith uses Rives BFK and Arches Cover paper to print her limited editions, which are very small--only five to ten prints each. She runs the paper through a Hunter-Penrose Little John flatbed press that she and her husband imported from England more than eight years ago. The bed size of the press is 28" x 48" and exerts an even pressure on the paper and wood. The massive, hand-operated press has changed her technique substantially. "I could no longer use a burnisher or spoon because I'd been working with printmaking so long that I'd developed hand and arm problems," she says. Since her prints tend to be rather large, sometimes ranging from 18" x 24" to 35" x 25", she finds the printing press indispensable, although she admits that getting the 1,500-lb press into her home studio was a struggle. "I know most of the forklift operators in town," she laughs.

She registers her prints using a printing frame that Moore helped her construct from plywood. Before their collaboration, Klingensmith had been registering by sight, with limited success. With Moore's help, she constructed a three-sided registration frame of plywood that she can adjust depending upon the size of her paper. When she prints up to the edge of the paper, the frame has no raised registration "L." When she wants a margin on the print, a registration "L" is placed on top of the paper and the inked block is slipped into the corner. She then transfers paper and block to the press bed and removes the registration frame before running the print.

The two artists met when Moore enrolled in an evening printmaking class Klingensmith was teaching at Iowa Wesleyan College. They began to discuss their work and the monotype process Moore wanted to learn. "We didn't expect those first conversations to lead to such a close friendship and working relationship, but as time passed, we recognized we had common goals in the creative process of making prints," Klinggensmith says. "We realized that we shared the ability to help one another grow artistically without our egos getting in the way," Moore adds.

While Moore has aided Klingensmith in building registration frames, she has encouraged him to use different inks, and both artists now print primarily with oil-based lithographic inks. Into these manufactured inks they mix small amounts of additives, including mineral oil-based gel reducers that minimize the stickiness of the ink and prevent the roller from marking the ink's surface without making the compound greasier. Occasionally, they mix in some magnesium carbonate to add body, and they sometimes add transparent base to produce more translucent colors for optical blending. Moore occasionally prints with oil paint mixed with extender, but Klingensmith uses the lithographic-ink mixtures exclusively.

Both artists like to vary their mediums. Moore creates original drawings and paintings in addition to woodcuts, and Klingensmith does monotypes, drawings, and paintings. Both have exhibited widely. Klingensmith, who is represented in Iowa by the Artisan Gallery in Iowa City and the Campbell-Stele Gallery in Cedar Rapids, participates regularly in juried competitions and invitationals. Herwoodcut He Sings the Rain was accepted in the 1993 National Printmaking Exhibition, sponsored by Trenton State College in New Jersey. Her work was included in the 1990 Boston (Massachusetts) Printmakers 42nd Annual Print Competition. Moore has exhibited throughout the Midwest and has received several corporate commissions. He has also worked as an illustrator, producing artifact drawings for books on Iowan prehistory.

Although both artists have families and busy careers, they get together at least a few times every month to work on editions in one of their home studios. And while they do work in other mediums, woodcuts are their primary love. Klingensmith comments, "We work with different subject matter--mine interior and Lennis's exterior--and we use completely different approaches to our prints; but we still draw from one another as artists who have made a connection. People may think that connections between artists only happen in larger metropolitan areas and only among like-minded people. But it isn't always so."

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