By Stowell P. Watters
Staff Writer
    When I walked into Don Gorvett’s Ogunquit home I immediately got the sense of the kind of person he is. He began talking to me about my Volvo, and before we had even shook hands he knew more about my history, my education and my interest in writing than I knew about him. The walls of his home are covered in paintings that range from small to massive. On every surface there is sculpture; art is a way of life for Gorvett.
    Before I met Gorvett I was anxious to see his work. I would consider myself pretty well-rounded in terms of knowledge of the arts, but when I began looking into Gorvett’s work, the art of reduction wood cut, I found I knew very little about it. That is to say, I knew nothing besides the fact that cutting was involved. And that there would be wood involved, somewhere.
    What I found, on the Internet and through talking with Gorvett, is that the art of the woodcut is actually the oldest form of printmaking, with beginnings in Egypt and China. There, in the first century A.D., artists used wooden stamps to make symbolic impressions on clay and wax. The printed parts remain level while the negative is cut away, thus allowing for the creation of a stamp, according to a MET Museum Web source.
    After the second century A.D. development of paper on China’s mainland, the stamps evolved into large blocks that allowed for in-depth craftsmanship and artistry. Religious texts by the Buddhist monks were one of the first mediums to incorporate this printmaking process.
    But in the mid-sixteenth century the art form began to take a different shape; used more for reproduction than creation. Books and their subsequent illustrations were done by method of reduction woodcut, but more and more the art form began to lose its personal expressive power.
    In the seventh century Japan caught on and adapted the Buddhist printing process into a more developed, artistic composition. The use of color, pattern and line that these early artisans were able to utilize and invent on woodcuts ended up having influence on the work of Gauguin, Van Gogh, Whistler and many famous, more modern artists.
    It wouldn’t be until later, in the nineteenth century, that the prints of Gauguin along with others began to make a renewed impact on the art world. The lithograph of ”The Scream”, a painting by German expressionist Edvard Munch brought renewed interest into the art form.
    Today the wood cut enjoys creative use in galleries and print-shops throughout the world. Gorvett has his own studio and gallery, called Piscataqua Fine Arts, in Portsmouth, NH. There he shows his work and gives lessons on the artwork he has spent a lifetime perfecting.
    I broke into the interview with my handy stock questions: How long have you been practicing the art form? Pretty much forever. Where did you go to school? Burlington High School, in Massachusetts. Where did you go to college? School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Mass. What inspires you? Everything. Until, through the hallway we both heard a stirring.
    “Hold on one moment Stowell,” he said, somehow already remembering my odd name.
    Gorvett returned to the couch with a smile.
    “That was Elinor, my teacher,” he said.
    It turns out that Gorvett lives with his first art teacher, from Burlington High, Elinor Marvin. Now much older, Marvin requires some help getting about. Every day the duo goes for a walk or a drive around the town. Throughout the house, I later found out, are ceramic animal masks and remarkable drawings by Marvin.
    “She, more than anyone, really nurtured the budding artist in me,” he said, folding his hands over his knees. The arrangement, he added, was perfect in that they both live together in peace, admiring one another’s work living amongst the birds and the birches in Maine solace.    Gorvett lived for a long time with another young artist in a secluded cabin in Gloucester, Mass. – America’s oldest seaport. There Gorvett put to use the drawing and painting techniques he learned from Marvin, but it wouldn’t be until 1981 that his interest and devotion to the art of reduction woodcut really began to take hold of him.
    “I always liked carving and the analytical aspect of color, states, light, bending: the aesthetic sciences, and I began really putting to use the things I learned in the print making department at college,” Gorvett said.
    For $45 a month he afforded the rent in what he called “truly unorthodox, strange living conditions.” Gorvett and his friend ate very modest meals and lived extremely simple lives. But what Gorvett lacked in commodity was made up to him in the form of spare time.
    “Time is important, people get so regimented they don’t know what to do with their free time,” Gorvett said, adding that the cabin afforded him the time to develop as an artist.
    His cuts take place in multiple stages. First there is the initial moment, the instance in which Gorvett finds himself struck.
    “Growing up in Boston and then moving to Gloucester and now Maine I find myself enthralled with the seafaring mythology, I love the marriage of architecture and the old-city feeling on the waterfront,” he said.
    The initial drawing is key in Gorvett’s mind. He said there is no replacement for good drawing skills and while pressing his pointer finger into his palm he said “I cannot stress that enough, the drawing is the root from which all expands.”
    Gorvett commits the drawing from the original paper to a flat block of wood he procures from the lumber yard. His favorite wood to use; birch or mahogany. He then grabs a small chisel and begins cutting away at the block in preparation for the first of eight or nine color applications. After one color is applied to all of the sheets, wood is cut away and then the next color is applied, each time warranting runs through the press. This process takes months for a big enough block. But Gorvett clarified; it takes months  for someone who has been doing it for a very long time.
    On Dec. 9 Gorvett gave a presentation at the Louis T. Grave Memorial Library in Kennebunkport as a part of their Pasco Lecture Series. Gorvett brought a variety of his works and demonstrated how he goes about working on the wood. He showed the crowd of 30 the variations of color that come into his work as he is creating scenes. Mary-Lou Boucouvalas, director of Graves Library, was present on that Sunday.
    “He is just so wonderful and enthusiastic, people didn’t want to leave, they stuck around a long time after he was done to talk with him,” she said during a phone interview.
    Sean Hurley is currently taking lessons with Gorvett. He specializes in etching, but has learned a tremendous amount from who he called “the master.”
    “Don is the technical master without equal. Working with him and watching him, I learn so much about color theory, about art, about everything,” Hurley said during a phone interview.
    I want to write more about Gorvett. I want to talk about his thoughts on the unjust neglect of fine arts in the education world. I want to share the enthusiasm he has for creation, production and original invention. But sadly there is no more space. Instead, if you want to know more about Gorvett than I encourage you to attend his gallery’s one-year celebration Dec. 15 from 2 to 6 p.m. For more information and directions visit www.dongorvettgallery.com.
    To contact Stowell P. Watters, call 282-4337 ext. 219 or email news@kennebunkpost.com.