tom killion.

Range after range of mountains
Year after year after year
I am still in love.

On Climbing the Sierra Matterhown Again After Thirty-one Years

Gary Snyder

October 4, 1986

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The random postcard I get occassionally a few times a year from the artist Tom Killion came the other day.

"Mt. Whitney from Little Claire Lake" (12" x 9")

Over the years I've amassed a little collection of these cards, which I absolutely treasure.

This one in particular is my favourite.

"Isosceles Peak & Palisades from Dusy Basin" (18.5" x 13.5")

I don't remember now how I first came across his work. Maybe just random, poking through the little cool, eclectic bookstore-slash-coffee shop in downtown Bishop, California, finding there in the heaps a copy of a book of poetry by Gary Snyder and Killion's woodcut prints called The High Sierra Of California.

Of all art (music aside of course), photography I love the most (umm, duh… ). Second though, are woodcuts.

I wish I could afford handmade art that - well - wasn't my own photography. Maybe I should offer a trade to a woodcut artist… Last fall my friend Matt and I wandered through town during one of the Santa Cruz open studios tour weekends. One woman's studio we toured was a woodcut artist. I was impressed; I wanted to buy something. Combining a little bit of lithography, screenprinting, and woodworking, it is a dream of an artform.

Anyway, the work of Tom Killion is incredible, and he details the process beautifully in that book I found in the little shop in Bishop. First, he sketches in the wilderness what will become the final print. Only one color can be printed at a time, and each color requires its own plate of sorts (in this case, they are etched wooden blocks as opposed to the aluminum plates used in traditional lithographic printing). Some of the prints can take close to three hundred hours to complete, he writes.

His work isn't excessively-priced relative to other art, and likely is quite reasonable… about four hundred dollars for a modest, twelve-by-eighteen inch print. The catch is he prints in limited runs (obviously, since all prints are done by hand), and the ones I really like are already out of print.



This one, looking up to Evolution Basin from the valley below with Evolution Creek meandering through the foreground, is my favourite.

"Evolution Valley From McClure Meadow" (12.5" x 19")