Art and Design Commons^™

Country Living, Richard Rinehart

Other Faculty Research and Publications

This exhibition taps into the ongoing conversation between the art world and rural America and looks at country as a cultural aesthetic that flows between contemporary art and regional culture. Country Living explores how place, identity, and values are communicated in visual culture.

Richard Rinehart,

Director, Samek Art Museum

J.J. Lankes (1884-1960): Woodcuts Of Rural America, University Of Richmond Museums

Exhibition Brochures

J.J. Lankes (1884-1960): Woodcuts of Rural America

1994

Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums

Introduction

In 1917, while working at the Newton Arms Company factory in Buffalo, New York, Julius John (J. J.) Lankes created his first woodcut. His only implements were a graver, used to score rifle stocks, and a block of apple wood he had cut from a fallen tree. The experiment proved a turning point in the life of the thirty-one-year-old laborer, draftsman, and erstwhile art student. Rapidly mastering the difficult white on black woodcutting technique, he went on to produce some 1,300 designs over the …