Snapshot In Time: In 1980, when Carol Summers was creating this color woodcut, in a newspaper section called the Kami Kaze Column, Honda announced that it would build Japan's first U.S. passenger-car assembly plant in Ohio. Following that news, the TGI Friday's restaurant in Detroit undoubtedly served a lot more of their brand new drink called the "Kami Kaze"!

Art Smart Fact: Summers produces his woodcuts by hand, usually from one or more blocks of quarter-inch pine, using oil-based printing inks and porous, mulberry papers. He makes his blocks slightly larger than the paper and before printing centers the dry sheet of paper on the cut wood blocks, securing them with clips. Summers refers to his own printing technique as “rubbing”. The ink is applied directly to the front of the sheet of paper and pressed down on to the wood block. (In traditional woodcut printing, including the Japanese method, the ink is applied directly on to the block.)

After the ink is applied to the front of the paper, Summers sprays it with mineral spirits, which acts as a thinning agent. The absorptive fibers of the paper draw the thinned ink away from the surface diffusing and muting the colors, causing a unique glow to evolve. This is a printing process unique to Carol Summers though many have tried to copy it. Indeed, in fine art schools around the world it is known and taught as the "Carol Summers technique!" About The Art: KAMI KAZE is Carol Summers' tribute to the Japanese art of the woodblock. It is like many Japanese woodcuts, a dramatic study of form and color. The subject matter appears to be simple....the ocean at night. A narrow band between the sea and the sky divides the vast night and gargantuan ocean. It appears to be a battle between the forces of nature. But we know "kami kaze" means far more than that and that is the mystery of this work.

Note: With every purchase of an original Carol Summers woodcut 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 be acquired separately here at Peggity’s.