Claire Dumont '26 and her woodcut display in Founders Hall.
Art professor Katy Collier's woodcutting classes allow students to express themselves through their carvings.
“It’s very accessible to the students and I see so much growth from them by the end of the semester. Even if they’re not interested in art, I see a lot of growth in terms of work ethic and creativity.”
The modern landscape artist no longer treks to the countryside, sets up an easel and paints the scene on canvas. Claire Dumont ’26, for instance, finds her inspiration in, of all places, her partner’s bed sheets.
From those twin sheets, she made hand drawings and distilled everything into an extraordinary woodcut, one of several woodcut prints from two Guilford art classes that are on display at Founders Hall this month.
The woodcut classes are taught by Katy Collier, a Visiting Art Professor at Guilford since 2016. She says the woodcut classes are her printmaking classes to teach at the College. “It’s very accessible to the students and I see so much growth from them by the end of the semester,” she says. “Even if they’re not interested in art, I see a lot of growth in terms of work ethic and creativity.”
Woodcut, the oldest form of printmaking, dates to ancient times. It was long considered a craft, used mainly for reproducing religious illustrations before artists began making more intricate work.
Woodcut is a relief process in which students use knives and other tools to carve a design into the surface of a wooden block (Katy’s students use Baltic Birch). Here's how to print a line: First draw the line on wood, then cut away its sides (this leaves a standing ridge on whose flat top sits the ink), then press it against paper. It sounds simple until you realize the image you want on paper must first be carved in reverse.
“Everything prints as a mirror so you need to plan out what you’re going to carve,” says Katy.
Claire, an Art major and first-generation student at Guilford, said she spent three days trying to get the exact image on wood that she had in her head. She took an introductory woodcutting class last year and wanted to try an advanced class this fall. “I really like relief printing and how physical the art is,” she says. “There’s a lot of work up front that goes into it, but it’s really worth the effort at the end.”
Claire likes the idea of taking a print and repeating it over and over. “It gets bigger and bigger to whatever size you want,” she says. “I like that you can take something small as a single print and have it grow to the size you want without changing the print at all.”
Claire’s work as well as other students from Katy’s woodcutting classes will remain on display in Founders into the new year.