BILL MARTIN - Mendocino Art Center
BILL MARTIN - Mendocino Art Center
BILL MARTIN - Mendocino Art Center
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Walt<br />
Padgett<br />
by Michele Ketterer<br />
24<br />
In October, the <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Center</strong> is pleased to welcome<br />
Walt Padgett, from Grants Pass, Oregon, into our<br />
Main Gallery.<br />
Walt is a most versatile artist: a painter, in<br />
watercolor and oils; a sculptor in metal and bronze;<br />
a photographer, a printmaker. He has taught and<br />
exhibited extensively throughout his long career,<br />
and just recently retired from his full-time teaching<br />
position in the <strong>Art</strong> Dept. at Rogue Community<br />
College.<br />
The work that has so greatly captured his imagination,<br />
and which will be featured in his exhibit, is<br />
that of his traditional Japanese woodblock prints<br />
– and it is the story of his pursuit of this art form<br />
which connects Walt in a fascinating and oddly<br />
synchronistic way to the <strong>Mendocino</strong> <strong>Art</strong> <strong>Center</strong>.<br />
Although this is the first time that he will be showing<br />
his work here, Walt’s ‘belonging’ is without question,<br />
as the story which brings him to this point began to<br />
unfold almost 30 years ago.<br />
1978 marks Walt’s first exposure to traditional<br />
Japanese woodblock printmaking – the work of<br />
Junichiro Sekino – shown to him by a well-known<br />
collector and teacher of the form, Robert McClain,<br />
the founder of McClain’s Printmaking Supplies,<br />
which, to this day, promotes the traditional style<br />
of Japanese woodblock printing, known as ‘Moku<br />
Hanga’.<br />
“It blew me away,” he states, all these years<br />
later – ‘the design, the richness of the colors... the<br />
bold lines.” He began to study and learn more. In<br />
1983 he decided to attend a summer workshop in<br />
Japan, under the tutelage of Toshi Yoshida, a master<br />
printmaker. He registered for the class at the Miasa<br />
Bunka <strong>Center</strong> (the equivalent of the <strong>Mendocino</strong> <strong>Art</strong><br />
<strong>Center</strong>, in Japan) – Miasa being (one of the first of<br />
our little ‘coincidences’, here) <strong>Mendocino</strong>’s ‘sister’<br />
city – an arrangement that had begun the previous<br />
year, through Bill Zacha’s own friendship with Toshi<br />
Yoshida.<br />
As sometimes happens here as well, the class<br />
was cancelled. Walt called and got the master, himself,<br />
on the phone. “Well, you’re still coming, aren’t<br />
you??”’ he was asked. So he went. He and one other<br />
student spent a month studying in the basement of<br />
the Yoshida family home, where he learned the traditional<br />
skills from the artist, as well as observing the<br />
work of all the additional artisans who performed