Snapshot In Time: In 1966, when Carol Summers was creating the woodblock print DREAM, there was actually a lot of dreaming going on all over America. You could see the new Janet Leigh movie from the Norman Mailer bestseller An American Dream or you could be seeing I Dream of Jeannie on television. That same year Jack Jones was at the top of the charts with The Impossible Dream and Classic Comics made Shakespeare a whole lot more popular with its version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. On a more serious note, in 1966 science researcher Calvin Hall published his landmark book The Meaning of Dreams which inspired a revival in the study of the subject matter in universities all over the country.

Everyone dreams although many people don't remember their dreams or don't pay any attention to them. Yet dreams often contain significant information for us, putting light on what has happened in our lives, or what is happening and providing insights about our future. Virginia Woolf could have been looking at Carol Summers' DREAM when she said, "It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes flows to the top."

Art Smart Fact: DREAM appears to be a fairly simple picture but beyond its subject matter is an intriguing theme. As in many works of art, the subject matter and theme are not necessarily the same. The subject matter is simply all the objects you see in the work while the theme is the underlying meaning of the work. Here, a simple garden scene in the evening, with a beautiful fountain of flowing water can also represent a new awareness of our subconscious thoughts and emotions.

In terms of artistic merit, every element in this woodcut print---line, shape, color and texture---is superb. In addition, as with several other Summers woodblock prints, DREAM is a perfect example of the use of asymmetrical balance, where opposite sides of a work of art are balanced but not with matching elements. Here in DREAM, the picture is balanced with different size trees that attract the eye equally. Ultimately these lead the viewer's eyes to the fountain, the real focal point.

About The Art: DREAM is an important woodblock in Summers' overall body of work. It is as appealing today, on both a visual and an intellectual level, as it was when it was completed over 40 years ago. Furthermore, DREAM is among the first of what are now called monumental woodblock prints. Carol Summers played a pivotal role in bringing the monumental woodcut into the world. This term was coined in the early 1960s when he and a handful of other woodblock artists each created woodcuts that were much larger than any done in previous decades. The earlier woodblock prints were much smaller in size mostly because of the limitation of the small hand presses in use then and an acceptance among many woodblock printmakers that only paintings could be large in scale.

Note: With the purchase of one of Carol Summers original woodcuts at Peggity's you receive free a four-color, 48-page Catalog Raisonne; a four color, 64-page 50-Year Retrospective Exhibition Catalog (including a color woodcut frontispiece); and the museum poster ROLLING SEA.....all personally signed by Carol Summers! Each of these items can also be acquired separately here at Peggity’s.