Picturing Places and Spaces

This large print is comprised of boldly-colored arcs, crescents, and undulating stripes. Summers wrote "Navarro Ridge" in pencil on the left side, and then it becomes clear that the curving green forms are the tops of the Ridge in Mendocino County, California. The sun fills the sky above the hills and the valley.

Carol Summers was born in Kingston, NY. During World War II, he served in the Marines as a bombardier in the Pacific. Summers studied painting and woodcut printmaking at Bard College with Louis Schanker and received his BA in 1951. In 1952, his work was part of a "new talent" exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He worked on a much larger scale than was typical for woodblocks, and his prints are described as "monumental." During the 1960s, he experimented with the printing process. Rather than applying pigment to the woodblock in the Japanese method, he placed paper on the carved block, applied inks on the paper, and then rubbed the surface. Summers sprayed the surface with a solvent that softened the edges and created undulating color fields.

He taught at many art schools and conducted workshops around the world. During the last thirty-five years of his life, Summers hiked with other artists through the mountains and the backcountry of California. When asked about the sources of his imagery, he responded: "the landscape elements are generalized and aren't dependent upon observation. They are a formal device for reconciling the weights and tensions of shapes and colors. I would have to say that the images come from unconscious sources."