Darrell Smith
Brookline, MA
Darrell learned the white-line woodblock printing technique at the Provincetown Art Association Museum (PAAM) school. He had no previous formal art training. Kathryn Lee Smith (no relation) was his first teacher. She learned the technique from her grandmother Ferol Sibley Warthen. Blanche Lazzell taught Warthen. Darrell also studied with Lisa Houck at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. After he retired from Harvard Medical School in 2007, he began his own printmaking practice.
His work has been shown in open and juried exhibitions at PAAM and at The Provincetown Commons. He completed the Teaching Artist Development Program at PAAM in 2022. He teaches workshops in the Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Museum School at PAAM. One of his prints was selected for the 50th annual Trail of Tears Art Show held in Tahlequah, Oklahoma in 2020.
It has been said that there are only two original art forms invented in America: jazz and the white-line woodblock print.
Bror Julius Olsson “B.J.O.” Nordfeldt (1878 – 1955) was born in Sweden in 1878. He immigrated to the United States in 1891. He is often given credit for inventing the “Provincetown Print”, a form of woodblock printing producing a multi-colored print with a single impression. It is likely that other artists (Ada Gilmore, Mildred McMillen, Ethel Mars, and Maud Squire) were closely involved in the initial development of the technique. The white-line woodcuts were inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, but only used a single block of wood. Designs were etched into the surface of wood, with the incised lines separating sections. The sections were individually painted and printed onto paper with the carved portions forming white lines. Blanche Lazzell, Agnes Weinrich, and others specializing in the white-line technique formed the Provincetown Printers, an artist collective that later would earn national recognition. The above artists were recently featured in “The Provincetown Printmakers” exhibition at MFA Boston from April 1-October 15, 2023.
Contact Info
Darrell Smith
bostondnsdoc@gmail.com