Kraig Binkowski
Evening Light.
The image may be in black and white, but it feels like dusk even without looking at the title of the piece. It’s there in the angle of the shadows thrown across the buildings in a nameless American city. It’s there in the texture of the walls, the texture of the glass. And for all the built environment, there’s just one person in the image, perched in a window, hunched over a little as if taking a break from work just to watch the sun go down.
Evening Light is one of over a dozen works in “Wood and Ink,” an exhibit of artist Kraig Binkowski’s woodcuts running now at the DaSilva Gallery on Whalley Avenue in Westville through Oct. 5.
Binkowski’s choice of subject matter — often lone individuals in urban environments — might call to mind the lonely figures in Edward Hopper paintings. But that comparison is too easy. It matters that Binkowski’s chosen medium is the woodcut, a method of making art that takes serious discipline and craft. For Gabriel DaSilva, owner of the gallery, Binkowski’s way with lines and negative space mark him as one of the best around.
DaSilva first encountered Binkowski’s work at last year’s City-Wide Open Studios weekend at Yale’s West Campus. “I go there to see who is around,” DaSilva said. “It’s a great place to meet people. and to see their new work.” But Binkowski’s images are “what I had to go back to.”
Binkowski’s cityscapes reminded DaSilva of Brooklyn, where his daughter had just moved. But he was also taken with the craftsmanship in each of the pieces he saw. He bought two on the spot — and later approached Binkowski to ask if he wanted to do an exhibit at the gallery. Binkowski agreed.
“Personally, I think printmaking is one of the best media out there,” DaSilva said. For him, the emotional mood of many of Binkowski’s pieces is at least partly a function of the artistic method. “He uses gray skies, snow, and rain really well,” DaSilva said — a state of weather that lends itself well to the technical opportunities and limitations of woodcuts. “It must be hard to do a summer scene,” DaSilva said; in Binkowski’s images, “you know it’s not July.”
Woodcuts also appeal to DaSilva as a lover of black-and-white artwork generally. Color, DaSilva pointing out, can quickly date a picture. We can often guess within ten years when a color photograph was produced. Meanwhile, a current photographer traveling to Yosemite could re-create Ansel Adams’s famous works there.
The labor involved in making woodcuts — particularly in the carving of the woodblocks to make the images — has an effect on the finished product. “You don’t just press a button,” DaSilva said. “It’s work.” Perhaps on some level the deliberate nature of making the images makes the content feel more deliberate as well. The people in many of the woodcuts, DaSilva explained, are people Binkowski knows. “They’re not just random.”
In the middle of the room is a case displaying the tools of Binkowski’s craft. “What I like to put here is teaching younger people the craft it takes to make that kind of work,” DaSilva said. “It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of skill.”
Natalie in the Wind.
And translating that skill into emotion is harder still, and it’s here that Binkowski really excels, whether it’s in the thoughtful face of a subject …
Dwight Street Glow.
… or the wry humor translated through body language …
Winter Wind.
… or, in a decidedly un-Hopper-like image, the way two people seem to be sharing a joke, even during a storm.
“We have really good printmakers — we’re rich in printmakers,” DaSilva said of New Haven’s arts scene. “But woodblocks — there are far fewer of them.” The rarity of Binkowski’s work makes it all the more worth a visit to the gallery, and to City-Wide Open Studios, which is, temporally speaking, just around the corner.
“Wood and Ink” runs at the DaSilva Gallery, 897 – 899 Whalley Ave., through Oct. 5. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.