Before the global warming of the past few decades, winter in the Hudson Valley was longer, bleaker and colder — the kind of weather in which the bright light of the winter sun can melt the inevitable snow on the ground only an inch or two a day.
Winter was the perfect season for lithography, that arcane and difficult printmaking process that highlighted the character of the spare rural landscape like no other. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, dozens of Woodstock artists portrayed in black and white how they felt about their surroundings in this elemental season, especially the white that surrounded them. The white of winter was relatively easily reproduced in lithography.
Paradoxically, people depend more on each other when they are isolated from each other.
From 1930 to 1940, Grant Arnold, the central figure in the decade dubbed by art historian Bruce Weber as “the golden age of Woodstock lithography,” operated a lithographic workshop in the rudimentary basement of the Woodstock Artists Association.
Bruce Weber and the Woodstock School of Art on Route 212 east of the hamlet have produced a gorgeous 72-page catalog of the show, which will continue through Saturday, December 9 in the WSA exhibition hall. Don’t worry, there are also images of the more hospitable seasons as well. But when you visit, be sure just in case to wear a warm overcoat in case the images of the Woodstock winters of yore engender a chill in your bones.
On December 2 at 2pm, the knowledgeable Bruce Weber will give a gallery talk about the golden age of Woodstock lithography. Visit woodstockschoolofart.org for more.
Join the family! 
