Arts Center to display "Grit" woodcut series

Sep. 28—HUDSON — North Carolina artist Michael Winslow will be exhibiting his "Grit" series of woodcut prints at the Arts Center in the HUB Station in Hudson starting this weekend.

On Friday, Sept. 30, Winslow will showcase his print-making art during the Artist & Author Reception in the Hudson Arts Center Auditorium from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. There will be refreshments, book sales, and an opportunity to meet Winslow, author Wiley Cash, poet Joseph Bathanti, and other authors who are part of the GetLit! literary weekend at The Mitford Museum. The public is invited to attend this free event.

Winslow grew up in Hertford in the eastern part of North Carolina. He attended East Carolina University in Greenville, where he studied art such as print-making and painting. He also studied commercial art, and later got a job with the advertisement agency, McKinney, Silver, and Rockett. Charles "Chick" McKinney's ad agency in Raleigh has garnered national and international acclaim.

"He got talented people together," said Winslow. "The agency was well known and well respected. I was privileged and honored to work there. He was a mentor to me, and I learned a lot about advertising, but also creativity, creative excellence, storytelling, craftsmanship, how to think creatively and look at things a different way."

It was there that Winslow met Jan Karon, author of the Mitford series and founder of the Mitford Museum in Hudson. They became a successful creative team advertising for North Carolina travel and tourism.

"We did a lot of ads that were very successful, increasing the tourism in North Carolina quite a bit and raising the profile of North Carolina as a tourist destination and a cultural and educational destination," Winslow said. "As a team, we enjoyed working together."

The agency ran an impressive print campaign of full-color, double-spread ads in all the major magazines at the time, said Karon. She and Winslow were awarded the Stephen E. Kelly Award in the Magazine Publisher's Association competition.

"I used part of the winnings to leave advertising and move to Blowing Rock where I began writing the Mitford series," she said. "Indeed, Michael and I have a wonderful personal history together."

Winslow was inducted into the N.C. Advertising Hall of Fame in 1999, the last inductee of the last century. The N.C. Advertising Hall of Fame recognizes people who have done outstanding work in journalism and advertising and also have some connection to North Carolina, such as having been born in or worked in the state.

"I was included in the Hall of Fame because of the work that I did promoting North Carolina travel and tourism, presenting North Carolina as a unique and different vacation destination," Winslow said. "Our ad campaigns were nationally and internationally awarded; they were breakthrough work at the time. Some universities used them as examples for teaching communication and advertising. I felt very honored."

Karon said she was thrilled that Winslow accepted the invitation to display his beautiful artwork at the museum.

"His farm images relay both the power of memory from his early childhood in an eastern Carolina farm community and the power of knife-on-wood to render human emotions and a story," she said. "The stories in his farm prints speak clearly of the sweat, the baking sun, the hands worn to a callous, the bone-shaking fatigue, the occasional deep breath when nature gives us a break. And in the portraits of men and women on the street, he manages to find the hope that often couples with despair."

Winslow was inspired to create art that showcased his early days growing up in farming communities.

"I was influenced by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who wrote about his life as a young boy on farms in Ireland," he said. "Reading some of his poems made me remember my father and my grandfather doing that sort of work. I thought I'd try to picture that. Some of my prints have a story connected to [Heaney's] writing."

Winslow's art medium is print-making using a woodcut. As he explained, print-makers will take a block of wood and draw a pattern or picture on it. Then they carve away the parts they don't want to appear on the print. The wood that's left will be rubbed with ink, typically with a small rubbing tool called a brayer, and then paper will be placed on top of the block and pressed with a printing press or rubbed by hand to transfer the image.

Winslow uses a fine-grained beech plywood from Japan called Shina Plywood that is a favorite among print-makers.

"It's a very fine wood that holds up well to cutting with fine tools," he said. "I use a carving knife and little gouges to carve straight lines and curves. It's a time-consuming and physical process."

During the reception on Friday, Sept. 30, Winslow plans to show about 20 of his prints as well as a carved wood block and the paper print next to it so people can visualize the process.

"I'm thrilled to be asked to have my work there because of my history and professional history with Jan," said Winslow. "She is a brand. She is so inspiring, she really inspired and encouraged me yo do these prints and little stories ... the stories at the GetLit! Event and my art go together very well. These writers have written about people growing up in small towns and people overcoming hardships."

The Arts Center is located at 145 Cedar Valley Road in the HUB Station in Hudson.

Visit www.themitfordmuseum.org or follow The Mitford Museum on Facebook to learn more.