Snapshot In Time: In 2003, the installation of directional signs within the 1.7 million acre Escalante National Monument Region was finally completed, seven full years after the area was first designated a national park. One reason it took so long is that flash floods shut down travel and work within the park for at least four weeks out of each year. It remains one of the most remote and pristine areas in the United States. Escalante National Park encompasses alpine highlands, expanses of slick rock, towers, natural bridges, arches and red rock slot canyons some of which narrow down to but one inch wide! Its easy to understand why this was the last place in the continental United States to be mapped.

Art Smart Fact: To further heighten the drama of the waterfall pouring through the canyon's red walls, Summers put this woodblock print on a sheet of paper a full yard high and only 14” wide. Individuals looking for vertical woodblock art from one of a only a handfull of internationally recognized woodblock artists should definitely give this picture more than a casual glance.

Summers creates his woodcut prints entirely by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, oil-based printing inks and porous mulberry papers such as those used for Japanese woodblock prints. His woodblock printing style reveals a sensitivity to wood especially its absorptive qualities and the subtleties of the grain. In several woodblock prints over his career Summers has used the undulating, grainy patterns of a large wood plank to portray a flowing river or tumbling waterfall. Such is the case with FLASH FLOOD ESCALANTE!

About The Art: When Carol Summers traveled to Escalante National Park, it was the height of the flash flood season. (A flash flood is caused by the intense rainfall that comes from rolling thunderstorms. The ground becomes saturated with water so quickly that it cannot be absorbed and the runoff collects and flows rapidly downhill.) With over 1,000 canyons in the park, it was just a matter of time before he saw a flash flood create a tumbling waterfall pouring down between giant red rocks. And it was just a matter of time until he made the experience more than a memory with the extraordinary FLASH FLOOD ESCALANTE.

Note: With every purchase of one of the original Carol Summers woodcuts 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.