More from Ladislav Hanka: Bird
Etchings of Ladislav Hanka -this website offers 63 of Ladislav Hanka's etchings.
Gallery
Wall - another site featuring Ladislav's Wood Engravings and Etchings
Ladislav Cepelak, a retired professor of printmaking in Prague, works as
I think I might at his age were I to stay the course for several decades more—a
kindred spirit casting his experiential net across Bach sonatas, winter fields,
dismal taverns, chestnut blossoms, moths, Milton, and the craft of violin-making,
to come up with a body of work which sings of the full experience of a life
lived with both eyes and heart open.
- Ladislav R. Hanka, artist, from the introduction to 50 x 25, a catalog of a bookbinding exhibit at the Bridwell Library in Dallas, Texas.
An interview of artist Ladislav Hanka by Rod MacIver, including "Discovering the Beauty of the Other" (Issue 51) and "Slowness" (Issue 48).
We've published Ladislav Hanka's art, and excerpts of his writing, a couple of times over the years. His sketches and etchings are delicate, impressionistic and inspiring. We've never met, but I once came across a photograph of him on the web. He may not have had a shave or haircut in a few years, or decades. We talked a little about that, and about his similar inclination towards not cutting his lawn. The long grass and wildflowers have been the subject of articles in a number of publications including a front page story in USA Today. The lawn, or lack thereof, has also been the subject of controversy among some of his neighbors and the city fathers of Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he lives.
Before becoming an artist, Ladislav got a masters degree in zoology. He went on to get a Masters of Fine Art, and became a full time artist in 1981. I started by asking Ladislav about the Ladislav Cepelak quote casting a wide net. (see above).
Ladislav Hanka (LAD): I tend to gravitate toward artists who cast a large net in their thinking. They've lived through a lot of experiences. Somehow that wide net enriches their work as artists. Artists who have tried all manner of things, worked at odd jobs, and ended up doing something completely different from what they were trained to do, often do interesting work. Sometimes I have a hard time justifying to people what I do because I am always flying off in false starts and trying things out. Learning about the world.
I recently went to Patagonia. When I got back, people asked to see my sketches from Patagonia. Well I didn't do a lot of sketches actually. I ended up traveling with someone. He was a nice enough guy and everything, but he wasn't an artist. Maybe it was a mistake to travel with someone who wasn't an artist because you feel like you are wasting his time sitting around sketching. He might be a good sport about it, but you know that he is basically not interested. He'd like to keep moving and seeing new places. So I didn't do a lot of sketching down there. But I didn't waste my time. I traveled in an ancient part of the world. I communed with ancient trees. I had my meditations on the roots of trees that spoke to me. The trip reminded me of the ten thousand things that Buddhists talk about trip that has the ability to amount to something much more.
I learned to observe in the years I spent studying science. I love all of the creepy, crawly things diversity of life and the adaptations. The adaptations that the parasitoid wasp has made to occupy a little niche in the environment. Artists have in common with many scientists that we all love the variety of stuff on the face of this earth, and we are enamored with the inter-connectedness. In ecology, dynamic systems are stable. The system that doesn't turn into mush and fall apart under stress is the system that is diverse. Stable systems have gigantic amounts of genetic material and life strategies happening in every which way. There is not a lot of inbreeding, and there is occasional genetic drift coming through the system. When something suddenly happens to the system, and a bunch of creatures die out, the system still works.
If you have monoculture, all it takes is one little disease to wipe out almost everything that is there. Something similar happens I think with culture and the arts. Those of us who are involved with the arts, who love the creatures of the earth, provide the diversity of the eco-system of culture. We are the ones that provide all of those weird ideas that everyone thinks are really stupid, and are a waste of time when money talks and bullshit walks. And the international economy is streamlining, and efficiencies are being found. We are ones who are introducing the opposite of efficiencies. We are the ones who are not contributing to the impoverishment of the system. We are actually creating stuff. And that is actually the only thing that will lead to human survival. Bill Gates and all of the people who are looking for the maximal efficiencies are really putting in an impoverished monoculture that will not survive. You and I who are contributing the fungal things that don't add to the national economy in an measurable, significant way, that spread ideas around, are actually providing stability to the system.
Bach sonatas and violins and the knowledge of the wheelwright who knew that the ash wood was the one you use for the spokes, and a different wood was for the rims, we are preserving this kind of stuff from being forgotten, while spinning around with new ideas and re-combining things every which way. A lot of progressive businesses like liberal arts educated people run their companies instead of specialists with management degrees. That is a truly wise choice. A person with a diversity of experience and ideas, is flexible enough to see problems or opportunities come down that aren't standard textbook variety.
Rod MacIver, artist and founder of Heron Dance (HD): How would you describe
your work?
LAD: Biophelic meditation. A love of biology, of living things, systems, complexities, life, death and transfiguration. The baseline around which it all operates is the now and the living, and things feeding off of each other and dying. There is a below and an above, a before and an after, that fluctuates around that baseline. Prior lives and future lives. The past. The present. Future. The present is the point at which life is physically manifest. Everything relates to that point, but the relationship has many sides.
I don't think of myself as a conceptualist. I don't really like conceptual art particularly. The urbane illustration of theories. I think of myself as a content driven artist, yes. But the big ideas that I get enamored of, that are in there, are all composed of individual little things. The broad net that gets casts out there. They need to lead back to emotional content. The dragonfly naiad has to be recognizable. Not just a signpost for the dragonfly naiad. There has to have enough personality, enough individuality, to reflect caring about the individual. Art needs to have a love component. I love fly fishing. So there will be trout, and things of the stream, and those things will all relate to the surface of the water where air and water meet, and the trout and the fly and the fly fisherman meet, and the stuff in the mud, and the insects in the air.
HD: What is most rewarding about the life you've chosen?
LAD: I suppose going out of doors with a sketch book and metal plate. Getting any art work done on the physical plane involves a certain amount of sacrifice and sticktail, of actually working in a studio with the chemicals and with the this and the that. I think most of us, find a certain reward in problem solving and getting things technically figured out. There is a certain intellectual aspect to that that is fun. But it also is hard work. You wonder sometimes what you are doing it for.
So you put it all down, and prepare a metal plate, or you take a sketch book out, and you wander around, and you draw pictures and you say, "This is the wonderful life. This is what I was born for." Just as often, you are swatting mosquitoes, and getting hot, and the ground you are working on is either too cold and the metal plate chipping off and shattering, or it is too hot and it is starting stick to stuff around it and the lines are filling in. And I'm thinking, "OK, now what? I am supposed to love this. This is supposed to be something I really love doing. And here I am grumbling and not enjoying it." And yet, somehow there is a transformation that happens in the midst of all that. The things you pay for with a little bit of sweat equity, you value more too.
You climb a mountain and you draw the picture, you canoe down a river and you get poison ivy, and you get bitten up and scraped up and a sprained hand, but you got a really good sketch out of all that. You think of the other people who get the same result by taking a snapshot and doing something in the studio from it. The one I sweated for, the one I walked across the mountain to get, is too valuable to sell. I hang on to it.
It might just have a few good lines, or it might be a lot more than that, but the ones you really sweat for are the ones you place the value on. There is value, there is enjoyment, that goes into trying to translate it into the materials of the world. It is the back and forth all the time between the studio work and the nature work. And ultimately, even though working out of doors is hard to do, it is a little like the vacation to some difficult place, where you do everything uncomfortable to get one really interesting experience, and that experience stays with you for the rest of your life. The interesting people you met at the train station when you missed your connection were the ones who made the whole trip worthwhile. There is something nuts about wanting adversity, and yet adversity seems to create good people and interesting experiences. And interesting artwork.
Some people think they want to take a vacation in Cancun and sip gin and tonic with cute little brown people serving them. And put it all on a credit card. Sleeping on the ground might be uncomfortable, and you might get sick doing it, but it leaves you with an experience that was actually worth something. Whereas a vacation in Cancun seems like a waste of money. All of that has to do with why I enjoy what I'm doing. I made maybe ten plates of an apple tree, sitting in front of it. There was something exquisite and beautiful. That is really rewarding.
HD: What has been most difficult that you haven't already talked about?
LAD: Transcribing the physical world. Yes, that and there is just no getting around that art is not an easy way to make money. The only people who truly understand it are your colleagues who do the same thing. For the most part. It is amusing to have people come into your studio and envy your life. "Oh man, this would be great. I wish I could do what you do." I say, "Well, you could." "But I'd never actually get anything done. I'd just sit outside all day and drink gin and tonic." You have to care enough to have the discipline to do it.
HD: How difficult financially were the first ten years of being an artist?
LAD: Very difficult. It was certainly helpful that I had parents who were supportive of the cultural life, and arts. They didn't give me a lot of support, but when you are real close to the line it makes a difference. It makes a difference to be given a used car when your parents are buying a new one. That kind of thing. That psychological backing helps a lot. Some people get knocked down by their parents, made to feel ashamed.
For the first five or six years I got by on two or three thousand dollars a year. I made a conscious choice not to go out and look for other jobs to support myself. But to really focus on my art, and pound the pavement visiting galleries. And I did a lot of art. And lived very frugally. I've never been in debt. I do not do debt. I just tightened my belt. I bought a house for cash. An old beat up house, and I slowly fixed it up. I didn't make a lot of long distance phone calls. I didn't keep a case of beer around. I do that now, but I can afford it now.
HD: Did you ever get close to giving up in those early years?
LAD: I suppose it occurred to me that I might have to give up. I was never pushed to the point that I was contemplating it in the short term. I thought things would have to turn around at some point. I've spent most of my life as a pursuer of the esoteric, and meditating. Whenever I've been on the right path, and I am doing what I should be on the face of this earth, it seems like I get enough back to make it clear that things would work out.
When I was studying science, among scientists, I realized that I was born to be an artist and I needed to honor that. The financial insecurity was hard to deal with when I first considered becoming an artist. But I've never really looked back since then. The most difficult time was when I was trying to make that leap of faith.
HD: How would you define a good life, a life well-lived?
LAD: I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer that one. Some of my life seems pretty stupidly lived, and some of it beautifully lived. I know some people envy the way I live, but I feel like a sell-out half the time. And a fraud half the time. Some days I pick up a pencil and I can't do anything right. Other days it goes well.
I'm living an interesting life. But just as I'm feeling pretty good about puttering along the way I am, I get in an awful argument with my wife about something really stupid. And I'll think, "Well, so much for all my meditations and my high-fallutin' thoughts." I struggle with life just the same as everybody else.
HD: Do you have thoughts on the relationship between art or creativity and
slowness.
LAD: Yes. A lot of thoughts. I come and go on that one a lot. Most good artists are manic depressive. The opposite of slowness.
I want to believe in slowness. I like to think in terms of the slow and deliberate pace. I like working that way. It really bothers me when I have a lot of deadlines hanging over me. I feel stressed out. I don't feel deadlines lead to my best work, but they do lead to productivity. And productivity in itself is worthwhile because it leads to a higher quality work.
Compared to a lot of artists I know, I've been pretty productive. I may be the one-eyed man in the valley of the blind, but most of my artist colleagues are kind of screw-ups in the department of getting anything done. I'm not really good at it either, but I'm better than most. There are an awful lot of people out there who just don't do much. They just sit around and smoke a lot of dope and drink a lot of beer and have a lot of ideas that never amount to anything. They don't get from the planning phase to sitting down and getting something done. Part of that is the discipline of eradicating some things from your life. And some influences from your life.
A lot of artists, myself included, are not very interested in most art. I've come up with very good reasons in my mind why most of the work I see is superfluous, unnecessary, silly, pointless and not worth my time. Whereas an art critic has to be open minded about everything. If I was that open minded I'd never get anything in particular done because I'd be so busy with all the possibilities. I need the discipline of cutting the dross away. Cutting, cutting, cutting. To do something means you are not doing everything else. There are a lot of people out there who are incapable of narrowing down to one thing.
So I'm a guy who actually does do a fair amount. And that gets back to the argument between high productivity and the simple life. The specialist—the classical musician—who becomes really good at the mechanics. The protégé who plays the Bach sonata and never misses a note. After a while it seems like there is something missing. That is the danger of high productivity. Often people who are not quite as good at something have more soul. Slowness does give you that, it does make your work more original. There is a balancing point in there. My life has somehow led to this manic phase, having to work like crazy to get stuff done, then cutting out and going into the woods to decompress. But my favorite way to work is not that way. My favorite way is coming back from the woods when I've been decompressing and actually coming back with some really good sketches because no one was expecting them or putting a deadline on me. That is when the really good ideas, the new ideas, happen.
HD: Have you had long periods of time when you were working hard but not doing
anything that you felt had value?
LAD: Sometimes at the time, but usually I find merit in the work later.
HD: What makes a work of art powerful or beautiful in your mind?
LAD: That is a hard one. All my definitions of important things eventually fall to pieces. It is like love. You think you know what it is, but as soon as you try to define it, it falls flat. The best I can come up with is that a work of art that is powerful must somehow also be genuine. Whatever that means. It comes out of a heart space in this person. Somehow you can see that.
If I walk into a museum of some school of art I've never heard of before—The Munich school of mid-nineteenth century art for instance—I'll be walking around looking at the various pictures. Three or four might look really interesting, and the rest of the paintings will look competent enough, but they won't have the flash that grabs me. I'll read about the school and I'll find out that the three or four I liked were done by the founder of the school and the rest were done by his imitators. I wouldn't be willing to put a lot of money on a bet that I could do that, but I find that I continually do.
All the paintings had elements I liked, but only the work of the founder had a genuineness about it.
HD: What do you struggle with most in your creative process, your art?
LAD: The same thing I struggle with in my spiritual practice: What is the point of it all? What is the big answer to stuff? I need to put that aside to start going somewhere with something.
HD: Do you have thoughts on the joys or difficulties of living a set of values
different from those of the dominant culture?
LAD: That is a part of every day of my life. Everything I seem to care about goes the opposite from the dominant culture. I do believe in reincarnation. I hear trees and other things talking. I get messages and visions. A lot of that stuff. I came to this place with such a karmic load. The purpose in my being here now is to swim against the current. And it is a pretty damn strong current. Pretty repressive at times.
I was told when I was a child that I would understand why grown men shave and mow their lawn. I'm 52 and I'm waiting for adulthood so that I can understand why a grown man would cut his beard off with a razor. Most of the men I know despise lawn mowers. Why would they submit to that instead of just having a little wildflower patch to drink their beer next to? When I bought this house, I stopped mowing the lawn immediately. I planted wild flowers instead. I thought that was really cool, doing the responsible thing and not mowing the lawn. I won't put pesticides on it either. I thought other people would understand that. But there are garden police all over the United States to enforce uniformity of lawn standards. I became a poster child for irresponsible lawn care. I was all over USA Today. Even the China edition of USA Today ran things about me for a while. In the mid-eighties and late eighties, my garden and my lawn were on radio programs, in newspapers. The Kalamazoo Gazette even pushed George Bush off the front page to discuss my lawn. Some of my neighbors still object, but garden tours come by to see the flowers.
In any case, this is not a battle I chose. I just thought that it would be natural and fun to have wildflowers instead of a lawn. Suddenly, the city commissioner, the city manager, and a neighbor were on my case. If I paved over my lawn with concrete and made a parking lot out of it, they would be fine with that. But because I have grass that is longer than the regulation, they are all over my case. So I asked them, "Don't you understand the craziness of what you are promoting?" I still hear from people once or twice a month who think that it was great that I stood up to them. Put it to the man and all of that stuff. Some come to my defense based on property rights—if I paid my taxes, let me do what I damn well please with my yard.
The other things that I think are much more important, they ignore me. I am always writing Congressmen trying to affect the policy for this place. Wolves are showing up in the Lower Peninsula. People want to shoot them. They call it "management." Where would be without management? These are my natural battles.
HD: Years ago, Ann asked me what four beliefs had shaped my life, and had
they served me well. I found the process of thinking about that useful, so I'd
like to pose the question to you.
LAD: I am not a big belief guy. It has been more attitudes that I've assumed. I think it has served me well not to be too in my beliefs. Instead my doctrines are shaped by time in meditation, walking in the woods. That practice, or intuition, has on several occasions saved my life. I just listened to the voices inside. Ducked the bullets, avoided the car accident. I know that there is more to life than what is on the surface. A whole lot more. When you are open to that, you become part of something much larger. There is something about the soul and spirit in the body. You have your guardian angels. All that exists. We have our little words and our symbols. If you are Irish they are leprechauns. They come to you when you are ready to accept them. It is hard to talk about, but I know I am best off if I don't close myself off into a lot of doctrines and beliefs.
There are core structures, core things that I don't do. But I suspect that virtually all of those at some point would fall to pieces. For instance, I don't believe in killing people. I doubt that I'd ever kill anybody. But the day that somebody wants to do my wife in, might be the day that I decide to kill somebody. I don't know. I don't know what I would have done if I'd been drafted and sent to Vietnam. Maybe I'd turn into an ugly killer under the wrong circumstances. Most of my beliefs are not as hard and fast as I might like to believe they are. But I know that structure is important, a structure that allows me to access deeper truths than to presume I already have them.
HD: How much time do you spend drawing as opposed to dealing with galleries
or patrons?
LAD: I get out and actively draw several times a week. I still don't feel that it is enough.
I spend about a quarter of my working life dealing with galleries, and museums, and framing, and making a living. That gets in the way of the art. I am sure that there are more efficient ways of doing things. Like getting someone else to print the plates I make, and someone else to distribute them, and someone else to frame them. Ladislav Incorporated. But I'm not a business man.
There is always a danger of just becoming another business. After a while you become a producer of some kind of a product. I know someone who makes an incredible amount of money just doing etchings of baseball parks. Fenway Park. Or Wrigley Field. They are competently made, but there is no spark to them. He makes $50,000 a year doing it. Maybe it is worth doing that for a couple of years and pocketing some money. But I don't want to do what he does. And he doesn't even have much respect for what he does. What a thing to fall into? Rather than fall into that, getting involved in a publishing venture like you are is probably a more rational choice. Doing something that is worth doing, that can make you a living. That is putting words in your mouth. Those choices are out there, and a lot of those choices are not that grand. Like duck stamps. Maybe those artists are living their bliss and I just don't see it. Most of those bird shows are pretty deadly. There is no joy in them. It is a craft. But how many times can you do a photo-realistic mallard? There seem to be a limitless number of people who are willing invest time and money in re-educating artists to do something useful in life. There is always somebody wanting to run a workshop to teach us how to apply for a grant. As opposed to actually providing some grant money. There is less and less money to go around. The National Endowment for the Arts no longer gives money to artists. I don't know what they give money to. Occasionally I get emails asking me to go out and fight for the arts. It seems a little like asking birds to fight for ornithology.
The grant givers all have big fancy offices, with high-paid administrators who decide how to distribute money to regional arts councils, who distribute money to local arts councils, and finally at the local level, people who get $50,000 a year sit around to decide what artist gets $500. And they want to make sure that that $500 isn't wasted by the artist so procedures have to be in place. There are so many hoops to jump through that no one wants to jump through them anymore. A number of artists I know have made the choice to pound nails for money and paint on the side, because it is just too hard to make a living from the arts.
HD: Does the word surrender mean anything in your life?
LAD: That is the graceful way to go, but it is hard to separate that out from the situation. There is a gracefulness that the successful have that is really wonderful. They have made their money. They can afford to be self-denigrating and make nothing of it. And not be self-promoting. Yet when you are hungry and lean, there is a necessity of being a shameless self-promoter until you get yourself to a point where you can be graceful and self-denigrating. There are these circles of which there is no entry and exactly. You can see how people end up on one end of the circle as opposed to the other, and why.
I am doing better now, and getting some recognition. I have enough money, basically, to do most of what I want to do. So I can be a little more gracious and surrendering about it. If I was still a guy getting by on next to nothing, and not sure if I would be able to buy food next month, I would probably be a lot less surrendering about things than I am now. Or maybe more. There was a gracefulness about that time too. Having next to nothing and accepting that and working through the night anyway. There is an acceptance of that which is. You have to. Whether you do it graciously or not, you are pretty much stuck with reality.
HD: Does the phrase "acquiring the discipline to penetrate yourself" resonate
at all?
LAD: I don't know if I have managed to do that. I often surprise myself at how petty I can be. In terms of art, there is a big circle, and the basis of art is in the center. You can drive the nails in from all sides of that sphere, and one of the places where you can drive that nail would be right there, having the discipline to penetrate yourself. Another might be love. Love of all that is. Love of every day. There are all these angles to go at art. Somewhere in the middle of all that is that kernel of what art really is. It is like I said earlier about love. You can't really define it, but you can come at it from many angles. And many of them are true.
HD: Is one of them celebration? Often when I look at your art, I think, "What Ladislav is doing here is celebrating what is really important to him: delicacy, intricacy, harmony."
LAD: Yes, celebrating it. Honoring it. Finding joy in it. Yes, it is. Finding yourself in it, but also turning outwardly to other things. One of the big things in my life, it is easy to get self-centered and concerned about your own things, it is easy to love things that are close at hand. Your own family, your own children, your own home, your own land. A big step in the life of man is to include the other. Where does the difference between me and these stop, and where do I start including you in these things? Instead of what is me and mine? When does something stop being me? Is it excrement? That line is really interesting. When you can include the other. When you can feel the pain of the tree being cut down. And understand what that is about. That is a real important thing. Getting an understanding of the other. The beauty of the other. A parasitoid wasp. I want to enter into a relationship with that.
HD: Are there artists whose work you particularly appreciate?
LAD: Oh yes. I love Morris Graves, for instance. Rembrandt. Leonardo. Thomas Moran. I some ways I like the idea of Walter Inglis Anderson more than I like his art. He was so nuts that he couldn't hide who he was, he just had to be who he was.
HD: Is there a poem or quote that particularly inspires you?
LAD: Lately I've reading a poem called Bobo's Metamorphosis. In there, it talks about an old man circling a tree and drawing it. An old artist who doesn't have a lot of use for the people who take a lot of short cuts, and do something in a couple of quick gestures. Spending years understanding a single tree. There is something really beautiful in that poem.
My Love of Old Trees
I liked him as he did not look for an ideal object.
When he heard: "Only the object which does not exist
Is perfect and pure," he blushed and turned away.
In every pocket he carried pencils, pads of paper
Together with crumbs of bread, the accidents of life.
Year after year he circled a thick tree
Shading his eyes with his hand and muttering in amazement.
How much he envied those who could draw a tree with one line
But metaphor seemed to him something indecent.
He would leave symbols to the proud busy with their cause.
By looking he wanted to draw the name from the very thing.
When he was old he tugged at his tobacco-stained beard
"I prefer to lose thus than to win as they do."
My artwork is primarily an investigation of Nature and
my relationship to her, as well as a search for meaning in something other than myself.
One can view the landscape from the perspective of its watercourses. Though they now require greater effort to approach, they still drain, sculpt and quicken the land creating erosion, sediments, ponds, riffles, and a variety which gives the land its peculiar definition. As an artist it is to these particulars that I must continually return if I am to stay honest and speak of what I have observed and know to be true.
I am convinced that the world is to be found in a grain of sand, or perhaps in a woodlot. However, in southern Michigan the landscape is so thoroughly broken up that one must find solace in the scorned, forgotten places. Here this means the river bottoms, to which I continually return, harboring the wealth of fishes, insects, and plant life I treasure – and I suspect richer in the associated spirit life for being left alone. This is where I go when the need for silence becomes compelling; for, in solitude one can hope to become still enough to discern the subtle voices and begin to perceive the connections. As above, so below; an ancient spiritual principle I accept which makes me a religious artist attempting to portray the face of divinity by drawing upon the physical evidence. I find the evidence most compelling in the silence of the woods. Here lie circuits of living energy, complex and flexible enough to insure longevity – dynamic equilibria which are eternal. The web of creatures and soil is complete and feeds energy among its layers continuously – nothing wasted, nothing hoarded. Eternal biological and spiritual principles becoming self-evident, recurring in endless variety: branching rivulets, twigs, rootlets, veins, nerves and ideas; life issuing from decay and in its course decomposing; creatures eating and being eaten. Accumulations of excess are merely temporary and self-limiting, wealth being weight. Heartbeats circulate the quickening fluids, like cloudbursts and springs moving the Earth’s lifeblood. Water in motion is in truth neither alive nor separable from life, and therein lies its insoluble mystery and inescapable fascination. I suspect that with sufficient attention and familiarity all things cease to be foreign and enter the ranks of the living.
To strive for the center that I am convinced is the locus of a spiritual and therefore sane existence I must look beyond the pain to that which is beautiful, to celebrate the miracle of its existence. Where the miracle is perceived there is hope that its absence will be missed. The danger in treating subject matter about which one cares deeply is that one treads a slippery path between sentiment and sentimentality. Staying safely away from this line of battle, however, makes for anemic art and is ultimately bankrupt.
I spend more time reading, walking, and fishing than drawing. Were I to do otherwise, I would run out of experience and purpose. Thus, my primary teacher is Spirit, mediated by trees and brooks.
Ladislav Cepelak, a retired professor of printmaking in Prague, works as I think I might at his age were I to stay the course for several decades more – a kindred spirit casting his experiential net across Bach sonatas, winter fields, dismal taverns, chestnut blossoms, moths, Milton, and the craft of violin-making, to come up with a body of work which sings of the full experience of a life lived with both eyes and heart open.
- Ladislav R. Hanka, artist, from the introduction to 50 x 25, a catalog of a bookbinding exhibit at the Bridwell Library in Dallas, Texas. Mr. Hanka can be reached at 1005 Oakland Drive, Kalamazoo MI 49008.
