Steve Krauss won’t take apart his enameled wall hanging of the mountains and valley where he lives, near Seymour, and transport it to the 36th Annual Fall Show of the Foothills Craft Guild, in Knoxville, November 8-10, 2002. The striking, colorful piece is too big.
Instead, he will pack a more portable collection of original prints, which, like his enameled pictures, demonstrate his preference to “simplify images.”
Krauss retired as Head of Medical Oncology, at the University of Tennessee Hospital, in 1990.
“I used to be a doctor. Now, I am an artist.”
Just as medicine changed over his long career, Krauss finds his artistic pursuits evolve.
In his youth, he was “a rock hound. Crystals are so satisfying in shape and color.”
When he decided to learn how to set some of the stones in his collection, he learnt how to work in silver, and made necklaces and rings.
This led to an interest in metal, and to enameling it, applying ground glass and subjecting it to heat.
At a workshop, which showed how to apply images on the surface of metals, he learnt about etching. A fine line in a metal surface is eaten out with acid. From there, it was a small step to print the image and develop an interest in block printing.
“A good wood block has a certain dramatic quality about it.”
He begins with a drawing, which he traces on to his block, perhaps a piece of birch, about a quarter inch thick. Digging down about millimeter, he removes the parts of the picture he doesn’t want printed. He inks the block and hand presses it, rubbing the paper with a spoon to ensure an even application.
In a simple print, this might be as far as he would go.
Krauss doesn’t stop there.
He removes more sections he doesn’t want printed and uses a different color for the second press. He repeats the process several times. This way, he can give dark green limbs to a tree on a paler background, darker pink shadows to pink desert sand, and show green water falling into a blue pool.
He calls this technique reductive.
“By the time I’m finished, there’s not much left of the block.”
In his final print of the Escalante River, he used “two shades of burnt sienna, two shades of ochre, three of green and two of grey.”
It took a week to complete. That may seem quite an investment of time, but it seems fast to Krauss. One of enamel hangings took three months. So, hand printing provides him with many more opportunities to share his simplified images of the world.
The 36th Annual Fall Show of the Foothills Craft Guild will be held in the Jacob Building, in Chilhowee Park, from November 8 to 10, 2002. Show hours are 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Friday and Saturday, and 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday. Adult admission is $5.00.

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