ILLUSTRATING MAN: Carving out a niche in metro art scene

AURORA | Strawberries, dandelions and elderberries swirl over one another as Michael Keyes gently traces their tangled vines with his coarse fingers. A casual denim shirt hangs loose on his slender frame as he peers through thick, gold-rimmed glasses at the intricate craftsmanship of each spidery plant. The cornucopia of fruit climb up neatly carved letters that read, “An Introduction to Winemaking.”

“Elderberry is my favorite, it can be really good, but it can be pretty bad too,” he says in a voice that sounds as if its coming through a record player – a sort of purring with steady crackles and pops. “You never know with home wine makers – it’s like trick or treat.”

Although slightly coy while speaking of his fellow home-based grape juice aficionados, Keyes brims with pride as he gazes at the sequence of prints on the western wall of the Aurora Cultural Arts District gallery off of East Colfax Avenue. The half dozen black and white framed pieces depict the process of making wine — from picking the berries to bottling – as explained in a book Keyes wrote on the process in 1986.

“I thought (winemaking) was a good theme,” he says matter-of-factly.

The centuries-old process of fermenting fruit is just one of the many ideas captured in the dozens of pieces Keyes has displayed in his new exhibit at the ACAD gallery, which opened Nov. 14. Ranging drastically in size and shape, all of Keyes’ pieces lining the ACAD gallery walls are captured in a medium, though not quite as old, nearly as traditional as the art of winemaking – they’re printed woodcuts.

“With little X-ACTO knives and gauges, I cut out the edges – cut this edge and gouge out, cut that edge and gouge out,” Keyes says of the medium he’s worked in for over 40 years. “Essentially, I’m working from black to a black-white balance.”

One of the earliest known ways to create illustrations for scrolls and books, woodcut is a relief-printing medium created by carving or gouging soft woods — Keyes typically uses white pine or basswood — so as to create image proofs that can later be translated onto paper. Over the years, Keyes has spent thousands of hours with his eyes fixed on what start as mundane planks of wood, slowly carving out detailed scenes from different stages of his life that he later coats with black ink and presses onto Japanese rice paper with a wooden spoon.

“The printing process is very simple,” he says modestly.

While it may be simple, Keyes’ longtime method of making prints is by no means modern. His technique predates the printing press and, until recently, if he wanted to create a multicolored image, he would have to apply the ink with a brush — a painstaking process that can take hours.

“That’s kind of the old school way of doing it and it’s a really interesting process to watch” said Tracy Weil, managing director of ACAD. “People really embrace the work when they see how complicated it is to create one of those pieces, so hopefully with this show they’ll appreciate it a little bit more.”

Keyes recently started using an actual printing press, after he became a member of Red Delicious Press, an Aurora-based printmaking facility, to enhance his work and help expedite his creative process.

“I’ve moved all the way up to the 1400s,” he says with a smile.

Keyes’ journey to Red Delicious, and now the ACAD, has been one anchored to his family — a longtime staple of his work. One of the oldest pieces in the gallery showcases the home in rural southeastern Ohio he built and lived in throughout the 70s with his wife and two children. Being close to the older  of his two sons, who now lives in Stapleton and is a father, is what caused Keyes and his wife, Betsy, to move to Aurora two years ago after living in Ohio.

“They’re just 10 blocks away, right on the other side of the tracks so to speak,” Keyes says of his son and grandchildren.

Though originally introduced to woodcuts by a high school art teacher, Keyes’ passion for the medium developed largely due to its family-friendly convenience.

“The thing about woodcut is after you clear up the dishes off of the kitchen table, you can pull out your block of wood, pull out your gouges and your knives, get a nice light there and work on woodcut,” he says.

With a Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University, Keyes also has an extensive background in oil painting, though he transitioned away from the medium because of its costly and cumbersome nature.

“Because of the mess and, at that time, the toxicity with turpentine and the fumes and so forth, I didn’t paint as we were raising a family,” he says. “It just didn’t fit because you need a special studio and equipment, plus the time to concentrate away from the family. I was really family-oriented, and as my wife and kids were experiencing life, I wanted to experience life with them.”

However, now retired after over 25 years working in the federal weatherization program, which helps low-income families weatherize their homes, Keyes is delving back into painting for the first time in nearly four decades.

“I’m working with plein air, and I’m hoping to do some portraits, because I really like people,” he says. In particular, he’s working on painting a series based on photographs he took of youth soccer players while on a mission trip to Honduras with his wife.

Although he’s excited to return to oils, Keyes is proud to have his extensive catalogue of woodcuts displayed at ACAD for the first time.

“I’m all about it, there’s some neat things going on, and I’m excited about being a part of it,” he says of the constantly growing arts district. “This is a nice opportunity to show a collection of some newer stuff and some older stuff, which I think is
wonderful.”