Relief Prints

There have been many occasions when as an artist I have reflected on the manner of my rearing and my memories youth and family. In this section you gain a glimpse into a single days activities on my grandfathers farm. In this story I recall the year that he hired each of the kids in the family to glean a series of fields collecting the corn fallen from the stalks from a blight before the picker could collect it.

All of the corn was sold to support our family plans for a vacation drive from St. Louis down to Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico for Christmas with family and back. Two weeks on the road for eight in a station wagon.

The 16 hand cut relief prints are direct recollections of that day in the field, one of many over the years. This was a day where daydreaming and building on a sense of usefulness and of purpose lives with me still to this moment. This story also recognizes my moments of struggle and thoughts as a youth sometimes distracted by my imagination while I was while working with my family in the fields.

 

On Caldwell’s Farm
By Denis A. Dale
Wildfire Press
Madison, Wisconsin 1983

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Long ago, back before my world became a place intensively paced there were times when simple things were commonplace. It was a time when a child’s education sometimes took place in not too common settings. Places where one could think, dream dreams, while at the same time learn positive attitudes and basic values. These being handed down through hard work and play by loving parents and grandparents.

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