interview continued...

McClain's:

You wear many artistic hats – relief engraver, painter, designer – what determines how you will illustrate a text? Is it the client, experience, or perhaps the text itself?

Barry Moser:

It’s always the text. My role as illustrator (a term, by the way, that I do not eschew in any way) is as a servant to the text. But in that role I try to take the text, by virtue of a sort of visual midrash, or visual exegesis if you will, from where it is to where it ain’t, if you’ll allow me to paraphrase Mark Twain. The poorest kind of illustration is one that merely parallels the text offering nothing new.

          Mark Twain

McClain's:

How do you come to illustrate texts? Do authors or publishers approach you, or vice versa?

Trout

Barry Moser:

It works all those ways. Usually when an author approaches me it’s a pretty good signal that he or she is an amateur who does not know the ropes of the profession. That rarely produces anything worthwhile. More often it is the publisher, or to be more specific, an editor with a publisher who approaches me with a project. And then there’s the matter of the books I publish under the Pennyroyal Press imprint. This is my own private press (not to be confused with a vanity press) and, as proprietor, I publish whatever I want, so I often approach writers and poets myself.

McClain's:

Can you tell us about the tools you prefer for engraving? Are there specific tools and sizes you reach for again and again?

Barry Moser:

I have maybe fifty engraving tools that I have collected over the years. Most of them sleep in a drawer and are seldom disturbed. Then I have about a dozen hard core tools that are always at the ready. I have had periods when I favor one tool and other periods when I favor others. For the longest time I used practically nothing but round gravers: they can, when held at an angle to their normal vertical axis, produce a very delicate hairline—no matter what the size of the tool. They can then come to the “correct” axis and make much larger, wider lines. The hand has to “dance” in order to make this happen, and it’s a delight when it does. A few years ago I discovered, as it were, the spitzsticker [elliptic tint tool] which is now my favorite tool. It’s not as variable as the round graver, but it’s faster. Beyond that I have all sorts of rarely used tools, like multiple line gravers and square gravers [square burin].

         The Cheshire Cat

McClain's:

In your book, Wood Engraving, the Art of Wood Engraving & Relief Engraving, you recount your infamous story of accidentally coming to love Resingrave. Are you a total convert, or are you still a man who loves a good piece of end-grain wood?

Barry Moser:

It’s been so long since I cut really fine wood that I have all but forgotten how it feels. So, on account of that and on account of Dick Woodman’s (the inventor of Resingrave) willingness to work with me on developing Resingrave, I have become a total convert. This is not to say that if I were to come across a cache of really fine Turkish box I would turn it down. I would revel in it. But I can say that if it weren’t for Woodman’s invention, I would have given up engraving years ago.

      The Nativity

Cock

McClain's:

Your book, Wood Engraving, it is now out of print. When can we and our customers expect it back on the market and while we wait, do you have any other good instructional book suggestions?

Barry Moser:

I was just talking with David Godine over lunch a couple of weeks ago and he told me that he was going to bring it back in print soon. I suspect it may be available again in the winter or spring of 08 [July of 2008 according to the publisher's website]. Simon Brett’s book Wood Engraving: How I Do It is very fine, perhaps the best.

McClain's:

All of the 262 illustrations for the Pennyroyal Caxton King James Bible were printed from Resingrave blocks. With all that experience under your belt, can you tell us about the positive and negative attributes of Resingrave?

Barry Moser:

Positives first: One, it does not check. Two, it is relatively free of warping, especially if it’s cast on Balkan plywood. Three, it is inexpensive. And four--and best of all--it holds the tools wonderfully well (as well as the best wood) and it prints well too. Negatives: First, it will not tolerate dull tools. This is not necessarily a fault of the material, rather it is a shortcoming of a lot of beginning engravers. The tools have to be very, very sharp. Second, if you have to grind away the material with a router you will find that the smell is not pleasant. Three, it is not type high which is only a negative if you are printing on a printing press (and even then it is easily shimmed to the correct thickness), otherwise it’s not a problem one way or the other. Is there a fourth negative? Can’t think of one.

Barry doing a "relief engraving" on Rensingrave

McClain's:

I read that as a younger man you were a preacher. Did this have anything to do with your choice to illustrate the Bible?

Barry Moser:
Oh, yes. I was a fundamentalist Methodist preacher when I was 19. Bible thumper. Inerrantist. The full catastrophe, as Zorba the Greek said. I read the Bible several times, twice without even skipping the genealogies, and I fell in love with the King James Bible. That translation and no others (though when I was working on the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible from 1994 to 1999 I constantly referenced four other translations for information, insight, and understanding.) I must say, however, that over the years I have become an agnostic, reprobate apostate—and a deeply religious one at that. I no longer attend any church and I want nothing personal to do with any organized religion—especially the ones that breed fundamentalists. But I still read the KJV. I think that my stance as an agnostic (which, by the way, simply means that I admit to not knowing) is the only intellectually appropriate position to be in to do that work. A believer, especially a fundamentalist believer, is too close to the text and loses all objective perspective. Or so it seems to me.                                                                                                                  

       King Solomon

McClain's:

You’ve written that artists should not attempt to “say something” with their art, that they should concentrate on their craft and from that will come self-expression. Some would say it is an artist’s responsibility to use their talent to bring attention to the injustices of the world. What are your views on that?

Flannery O'Connor

Barry Moser:

Flannery O’Connor said it better than I can. She said that “the novel [read here “print,” “illustration,” “painting”) is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it. I didn’t make this up.” she said. “I got it from St. Thomas (via Maritain) who allows that art is wholly concerned with the good of that which it is made; it has no utilitarian end. If you do manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first.” She also said that God and posterity are only served by well made objects. So, if one feels deeply about something and wants to “speak out” about it in his or her work, it must be considered as an object (and a well made one at that) FIRST. If it’s made well, the social, political, religious meaning will follow.

McClain's:

Can you tell us about an engraving of yours that you consider your favorite?

Barry Moser:

Where to start? With the one that just popped into my head I reckon…”And the Sea Stopped Raging,” in the book of Jonah in the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible. Ask me tomorrow and I’ll give you a different answer.

This image, to recap the above, if it is a good image, is good because of its structure and composition. The large, simple black area contrasted against the complex engraving of the areas around it (note that I am avoiding words that define or refer to subject matter) give it its impact. Its gestalt. That the black area represents the flukes of a whale is, as far as the image goes, irrelevant. However, as far as the image as ILLUSTRATION goes, it is not irrelevant. Here the sea “stopped raging” when the crew of the boat old Jonah had booked passage on to Ninevah threw his butt overboard ‘cause they figured he was causing the storm. A “big fish” swallows him and three days later pukes his slimy, sorry self out onto dry land. Ok. Big fish, not a whale. However, if you consider that Melville refers to whales in Chapter 30 of Moby-Dick as “fish,” knowing full well that they were mammals (see the chapter about the whale’s penis called “The Shroud’) why would or should I assume that the writer of this 1500 year old story who was a long way away from whaling grounds would have known any better? So, I use a whale. It’s logical. It’s dynamic as form. And it just happens, as I configure it, to recall the cross. That is fitting in light of the Christian tradition of interpreting this very Jewish story as a metaphor for the death, entombment, and resurrection of Christ. I could go on, but you all don’t have the space.

  And the Sea Stopped Raging

McClain's:

Do you have any tricks to avoid repetitive stress injuries when you engrave?

Barry Moser:

No. Not really. I can engrave for 12, 13 hours a day and never have cramped hands or fingers. In fact I have never had any sort of orthopedic problems in my hands or lower arms (now shoulders, knees, neck…that’s a different matter). I think that if anything helps prevent these problems it is simply to be relaxed. You should never use so much pressure or hold the tool so tightly that you see any really white skin on you hands or knuckles. If this is happening then you are either over controlling, holding the tool in an awkward and uncomfortable manner, or your tools are not sharp enough to cut fluidly and easily.

   Jack's Giant's Repast

Huck Finn

McClain's:

You’ve embraced the digital world as a tool for your art work, using Photoshop to collage photographs for your engraving designs. What are your opinions about digital art itself?

Barry Moser:

I am on the fence. I see things that are really exciting from the purely visual point of view, but then I look at the piece itself, the finished object, and it’s static and uninteresting. It harks back to the O’Connor quotation above. I think I will defer my opinion until somebody comes up with a printer that gives some character to the surface. When that happens, and it will…I mean they now have three dimensional printers ferchrissakes… I will probably embrace it with heart, mind, and soul. Meanwhile I will continue using digital technology for my own ends…and it is just that to me, a means to an end.

To see the Pennyroyal Press and more of Barry's work please visit Pennyroyal's website:

https://moser-pennyroyal.com/Home.html