Mabel Hewit (1903–1984) was an American woodblock print artist, particularly the white-line style of the

Provincetown Printers Provincetown Printers was an art colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts during the early 20th-century of artists who created art using woodblock printing techniques. It was the first group of its kind in the United States, developed in an area when ...

Early life and education

Mabel Amelia Hewit was born in 1903 in

Conneaut, Ohio Conneaut ( ) is a city in Ashtabula County, Ohio, Ashtabula County, Ohio, United States, along Lake Erie at the mouth of Conneaut Creek northeast of Cleveland. The population was 12,841 at the 2010 Census. Conneaut is located at the far northeast ...

, and was raised in

Youngstown Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County. At the 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area, which ...

, where she graduated in 1921 from South High School. She attended Ohio State University, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1926. While there, she was a member of the

Pen and Brush Club Pen and Brush Club (also known as Pen + Brush) is an international organization of professional women, writers and artists. Organized in 1897, the women formed themselves into a club of which the object was to be recreation and the promotion of soc ...

Panhellenic Greek nationalism (or Hellenic nationalism) refers to the nationalism of Greeks and Greek culture.. As an ideology, Greek nationalism originated and evolved in pre-modern times. It became a major political movement beginning in the 18th century, ...

Council, Zeta Tau Alpha, and

Kappa Phi Kappa Phi () is a national Christian sisterhood, which "focuses on four areas: Service, Worship, Fellowship, and Study." The student organization is interdenominational Christian, although it was formed under the auspices of the United Methodist C ...

. She also was on the staff of ‘’Phoenix’’. She then taught in Detroit and Youngstown's public schools. In 1932, she received her master's degree from the Teachers College, Columbia University. While at Columbia, she took art classes from Blanche Lazzell, who created woodblock prints using the white-line technique, at her studio at Provincetown, Massachusetts. She also took art lessons at the Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck, Michigan over sixteen summers.

Career

During the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, in 1934, she moved to Cleveland with her sister, Ednah Jurey, a weaver and certified public accountant, and lived there and then Parma for the rest of her life. She had a studio in Cleveland. Hewit made prints of city and small-town life from that time. Using the white-line woodblock technique, she created prints of women sunbathing at the beach, ''The Ball Game'' (1934), factories, and neighbors with gable-roofed house that reflect her interest in modernism in the slightly abstract forms. Her works reflect influence of 19th-century Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, her study with Lazzell, and French works, like that of Paul Gauguin and Maurice Denis. She said that she liked "block printing because it gives the family of moderate means an opportunity to have something of color and art in their homes." In 1946, she captured an outdoor scene of a couple playing chess in ''Summer Chess''. She made ''Janitzio'' of an island of a Mexican lake in 1954 that "says 'early paradise' with extreme economy. She also made prints on fabric. She made watercolor paintings, lithograph prints, enamels on metal, and ceramics. Her enamel works, which were in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, were exhibited in 1949. She died in 1984. An exhibit of her work was held in 2010 at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with an accompanying book for the show, ''Midwest Modern: The Color Woodcuts of Mabel Hewit''.

Early life and education

Career

References

Further reading