The following post is about fine art prints. Reading the words "fine art prints" is enough to make some people want to jab sharp sticks in their eyes just so they don't have to go on. These people had traumatic art history classes as undergraduates that involved lots and lots of slides that were mostly out of focus. They still have nightmares, and I understand. I won't think less of them at all if they stop reading now. Stop. No really. It's only going to get worse. Stop.

Alright, but you asked for it.




My husband and I have welcomed a new member to our family.

Please meet "Dusk at Phoenix Hall" by Kawase Hasui (1951). He's our prettiest baby by far, not that he has much competition. It's a small family.

"Dusk at Phoenix Hall" is a woodblock print snow scene. And not just snow on the ground. It is still snowing, each flake perfectly clear in front of the curved roof of the traditional Japanese building. It's an incredible feat when you imagine a master carver having to cut the plates just perfectly to keep each tiny flake from being smudged into oblivion when the ink and paper were laid on.

"Look at that snowflake," I said. Some friends of ours without the print bug were with us. "It's perfect."

"Uh huh."

"No, really!" I enthused. "Look!"

"Sure. Perfect." They had that glazed look I get when my husband explains the rules for Dungeons and Dragons to me. The one that says, "When do we eat?"

What can I say. I'm a geek. (For the un-geeks among us, "geeking out" would be the proper term for crazed enthusiasm over a relatively minor aspect of our geek world. Nearly peeing your pants over a snowflake would be "geeking out.")

For some people, it's tea pots or stamps or Pez dispensers. My husband and I are mad for Japanese woodblock prints. And not in bad company. Frank Lloyd Wright owned so many he was said to have made a serious dent in the inventory of them throughout Japan. (He also felt a few of the ones in his collection needed improvement and was known to actually take a colored pencil to them to brighten them up. Imagine deciding that your Picasso sketch was a little dull and taking a magic marker to it - it's like that.)

"I'm just going to look," I said when the brochure for the L.A. Print Fair came in the mail. "Just to look."

This was probably a little like a drug addict claiming they just want to browse at the crack house. "I just want to look at the crack. No, no. No doggy bags for me. I'm just appreciating the crack in its natural habitat."

It's turns out the natural habitat for my crack is the living room wall. But man, did you see that snowflake?





Okay, somebody can tell the non-art people it's safe to come back in now.