Postcards from Asia.

San Francisco:: Art Hazelwood,, 2005.. Edition of 25. 9.5 x 9.5" closed, extends to 108"; 12 pages. Accordion structure. Woodcut images printed on white paper, which has been tipped onto heavyweight cream wove support paper. Bound in wood-grain design Japanese paper-covered boards. Each image signed and numbered by the artist. An accordion-folded collection of woodcuts by Art Hazelwood of images of people and scenes from Asia. This book is an offshoot of his print series Walking Up and Down in Asia.  Art Hazelwood: "From 1986 to 1993 I traveled around the world, living in Europe and Asia and in various parts of the States. My primary interest however was traveling in Asia. The intensity of travel lured me on to see more and more. Experiences of people and places left their mark and I have tried to give back some of that feeling. The Tibetan nomads, Vietnamese 'cyclo' drivers, Japanese 'salary man,' Sikhs, Thais, and Uyghurs that make up this series are the actors on an impossibly crowded world stage. It is this sometimes overwhelming encounter with the world that these prints seek to express. "Prints in this series include images of the following countries: China, Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Pakistan. The production of this entire series makes up a period of 14 years from first trip to bound book, although the body of the prints were cut in the mid to late 90's." "Review of Walking Up and Down in Asia," Berin Golonu, Artweek July/August Edition 2000: "When people embark on their travels, they often record their adventures in snapshots or in travel journals. Art Hazelwood has taken a more time-honored approach to recording the memories of his travels throughout Asia. After sketching his observations on drawing pads, Hazelwood creates woodcuts of his impressions in a graphic folk style. Flattened perspectives give added emphasis to an all over patterning, with crowded compositions that fill every square inch of the picture frame. Hazelwood's dynamic genre scenes and landscapes at once emphasize the frenetic activity of a dense urban metropolis such as Tokyo or Hong Kong, while at the same time, capturing the more leisurely way of life led by the region's rural inhabitants.