Snapshot In Time: Carol Summers was tuned in when he was creating this whimsical woodblock print in 1994 with its fun and unusual objects in a star-studded sky. Just about this time, pictures of galaxies in their infancies were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and sent back to Earth on super airwaves. However, here on earth real kitties, houses and palm trees actually did go sideways as a rocking earthquake shook the entire Los Angeles area. Los Angeleans were resilient as usual and within a month houses were fixed, cats back home and taquerias once again were serving hot chile peppers or showing them in food art.

Art Smart Fact: In the woodcut print AURORA BORACHA, Summers added an uncharacteristic dose of surrealism .....art that is characterized by the bizarre, incongruous and the dreamlike.....to his landscape. Surreal art is anchored in everyday reality, but has overtones of fantasy or wonder-----like this hilly landscape under a starry night with a cat climbing to the stars, a house with a fired-up roof lifting upwards like a rocket, a sideways palm tree, and of course the giant red hot chile pepper floating in the starry sky. You can see, as is the Summers’ style, even in surrealism he kept his woodblock fun and amusing.

About The Art: In astronomy, an “aurora” is an optical phenomenon characterized by colorful displays of light in the night sky. It is caused by the interaction of charged particles from the solar wind interacting with the upper atmosphere of Earth; the most famous is the Aurora Borealis. In the Spanish language, “boracha” means inebriated or tipsy. So we have been given a surreal look at what the Aurora Borealis might conjure up if it imbibed too much tequila!

AURORA BORACHA tells a story about two places where Summers resided. First, growing up in upstate New York he was dazzled by the real Aurora Borealis in the distant northern skies. Hot chili peppers, cats and houses with fire were part of his life later on. In Guanajuato, Mexico, Summers did his woodblock printmaking in a studio for awhile in the 1990s. He was there off and on with his wife who was a weaver, and their cat, all in a house next to Mexican pottery-makers who fired up the kilns in their homes almost every day.

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 also can be acquired separately here at Peggity’s.