Woodblock printing has been central to Ilse Schreiber-Noll’s practice for many years. It was one of the first mediums through which she found her own voice. “I have always been drawn to its physicality and the direct dialogue it creates between hand, material, and image,” she says. “Even after I began painting, I continued to return to woodblock printing, as it is through the wood that I rediscovered the connection with nature I had often lost.” For Schreiber-Noll, wood carries its own history, in its grain, its scars, its age. “When I carve, I do not simply impose an image upon the wood; I listen to what the wood reveals,” she says. “Each cut becomes a mark of time, a trace of something lived, remembered, or lost. These woodcuts bring together the personal and the collective. They hold love and anger, beauty and violence, loss and wonder. They speak of war and destruction, of renewal, and of the fragile persistence of life. The grain of the wood becomes the grain of time in which the past remains alive.”

About the artist: Ilse Schreiber-Noll is a German-born multimedia artist. After coming to the U.S., she studied at SUNY Purchase, where she received her MFA. While at Purchase, Schreiber-Noll taught “The Art of the Book” with her mentor and friend Uruguayan American visual artist Antonio Frasconi, best known for his politically charged, dynamic woodcut prints. His work,together with the works of German writers and artists such as Bertolt Brecht, had a profound influence upon Schreiber-Noll. Working across paintings, woodcuts, installations, and artist’s books, she most often depicts the terrors of war and the threat of ecological disaster. A frequent collaborator with poets and musicians, Schreiber-Noll has worked with Joseph Brodsky, Dennis Brutus, Galway Kinnell, Octavio Paz, John Cage, and Robert Kelly, among others. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley.