Confronted By The Doppelgänger!

1985
woodcut
24" x 36"

I’m very proud of this woodcut so I hope you’ll excuse the long rambling about it. It was the third (and last) one I did in my first woodcut class at Wayne State University. After doing the first two, it was obvious I was taking to this medium very quickly, so my instructor Stanley Rosenthal suggested I get a large sheet of plywood and attempt a life-size figure.

I did many sketches of the figure out of my head and later sat in to sketch in a figure drawing class that had a model coincidentally in the same pose. After transferring a sketch onto the wood, I went over it with a bamboo brush and sumi ink. I liked the brush marks so much, I tried to keep their quality when I cut it.

To see a closeup of the head, click on the print. A new window will open.

As for the title, I read somewhere about the legend of the doppelgänger, which literally means "the double who walked where you did". Apparently, it’s an old German legend that somewhere in the world is an exact duplicate of you. That is your doppelgänger. I loved the concept and thought a lot about what my double would be like in another part of the world. The print expressed my wonderment. The person looking at his mirror image isn’t doing it out of narcissism, but out of self-exploration.

Technique-wise, I was heavily influenced by German Expressionism and comic book art. This may seem a strange combination, but doing black & white comic art helps develop skills in graphic depiction of contrast, form, and shadow.

Besides being the main focal point in our student show, it showed in a couple galleries, including The Detroit Artists Market and The Scarab Club. I submitted it to the Alma College Print Show that was being juried by David Becker, another WSU instructor I admired and a terrific printmaker. To my delight and great surprise, it won an award and became part of Alma College’s permanent print collection. That year, mine was only two of the dozen awards that didn’t go to an art professor.

If that wasn’t enough, a few years later, the Detroit Institute of Arts had a Michigan Artists Print Show featuring prints from the Alma College collection. There was my print hanging along with prints from the aforementioned Stanley Rosenthal and David Becker, as well as other printmakers and professors I’ve been in awe of (like Jim Nawara). This was at the same time as The Meat Tester being shown across the street at The Scarab Club. It was a great time in my life.