Credo

The assignment in our printmaking class was to choose something that had meaning for us and make a 'broadside' of it. Of course, this was not something one could do in an evening or a week or even a month. We were young! Who knew what would have meaning for us? Professor Feldman told us that this major work could be an etching, a monotype, or any other kind of medium in the printmaking range.

I chose to make mine as a woodcut, so tedious and time-consuming to do, so fraught with the possibility of cutting oneself with the tools. I chose a large three by five foot board and for many weeks I thought and lived with mirror writing as I carved out those words and image and the curls of displaced wood fell to the floor.

My quotation was from Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass':

"I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars, and the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand and the egg of a wren and the tree toad is a chez d'oeuvre for the highest and the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, and the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, and the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, and a mouse is enough to stagger sextillions of infidels."

To this day, more than fifty years later, this woodcut hangs on the wall in my studio and I see it every day and wonder afresh. This quotation has more meaning for me now than it did then as a newly aware person beginning to understand how important in my life these ideas would be.

What I would add to this Credo now would be: I believe that all children born are perfect, and have the right to become healthy people of dignity and opportunity. This I believe.