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Ladislav Hanka

Etchings
 
Availability and Prices on Request : Phone: 608-255-1211, e-mail: staff@gracechosygallery.com
 
The Bird Series

The Fish

The Trees and Landscape
 
Artist Resume

 
The Bird Series
 
About the Birds: click

   

Ladislav Hanka, Grebes, Etching

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The Mushrooms
Etchings
 

 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

The Birds

Etchings
 
   

 

Views of the February Exhibit Installation - For Individual Images select from links above

View of the left side of the Featured Exhibit Area -
Ladislav Hanka works

 

On Wall from left - 4 framed Wood Warbler etchings & Text; 2 Trout etchings;
The Garden of Eden etching
On Pedestal clockwise from left rear book: 2 copies and slipcase of Text of The River;
On end in center - The Iowa Couplets,
Pedestal right - Privilege, book and slipcase, Front - Opus Salvelinus and slip case

 

 

2 framed sets of 3 Illustrations from The Decorations, wood engravings
On Pedestal left : The Decorations
On Pedestal right: The Book of Ruth


Hanka, 4 framed Wood Warblers and Text
Individual Images below

 

Top: Hanka, Brook Trout II, A.P., 1995, etching, image size:4 3/4" x 7 1/4", frame size: 12 3/4" x 15 5/8"
Bottom: Brook Trout IX, 1995, hand colored etching, image size: 7 1/2" x 9 1/2", frame size: 15 3/4" x 19 5/8"

 

From Left: Hanka, Million Dollar Oak, 2007, etching with text, image size: 20 1/2" x 23 1/2",
frame size: 23 1/2" x 29 1/2"
Center: Hanka, Toads, etching, image: 11 1/2" x 15 1/2", framed size: 16 3/4" x 20 3/4"

Right: Hanka, 2 sets of 3 Monks, each image: 5 3/4" x 3 3/4", frame: 13 1/4" x 23"

Of Pedestal: left: Book of Toads, Folio of prints with Etching printed on leather binding, 17 3/4" x 12 3/4" x 1/2"
On stand: Tibetan Monks, tibetan block printed on leather cover, 12" x 8 1/2" x 3/4"

In front : Byt Bozim Blaznem - To Be the Divine Fool, Sobota Binding, Hand set type with 9 etchings,
12" x 7 1/4" x 1"

 

Hanka, Text and 3 etchings from the folio of Mushrooms, Images: approximately 11 1/2" x 4, frames: 26" x 20"

 

Top left: Hanka, The Land of the Crooked Tree, A.P., etching and text, 15 3/4" x 22 1/4", frame: 26" x 20"
Top Right: Hanka, Green Sky Maple VII, A.P., etching, image:17 1/2" x 11", frame: 26" x 20"
Lower Left: Hanka, Green Sky Maple VI, A.P., etching, image:17 1/2" x 11", frame: 26" x 20"
Lower Right: Hanka, Green Sky Maple V, A.P. etching, image:17 1/2" x 11", frame: 26" x 20"
 

Ladislav Hanka


Mushrooms: Inflorescences of Decay

Mushrooms are flowers of the dark - beautiful aromatic gifts from the mysterious, decomposing side of the life cycle. These fungal decomposers also generate many of the most biologically active substances in nature and therein lies part of their fascination too. A great deal of folk medicine as well as modern pharmaceuticals have their origins in the rootlets of mycelium reaching into logs and fruits, composting all that is organic and making it over into its own flesh, for now, until another creature commandeers the energy being stored in the mushroom's accumulating reserves - Pennicilium mold is just the best known example. The common cavalier mushroom (Tricholoma flavovirens) growing under pines in sandy upland soils is eaten by Europeans (and a few courageous Americans) late in the season when there are few other mushrooms to be found, but in Cambodia, they are gathered from the highest mountains as a medicine to the arthritic. Mushrooms are powerful juju.

Some of the most intensely fragrant musk-Iike smells of the northern woods come from decomposing birch trees. The various fungal growths on birches have their traditional uses and include the warty looking growth, which Russians call chaga (Inonotus obliques) - used all across the northern Eurasian landmass to treat stomach cancer.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn used chaga to cure himself of stomach cancer while imprisoned in the gulag. My father, when he was employed as a cancer researcher, assayed this fungus for anti-tumor effects and did indeed detect promising activity. But this took place against the backdrop of elections and a new administration was voted
into office in Washington. Government contracts are the plums with which co-operation is rewarded and in this
case the contract was not renewed, but went to other people at other institutions. The chaga study was dropped before preliminary data could be further developed. The better results were actually with ulcers than cancer - and why not? What village herbalist could be expected to differentiate between an open bleeding ulcer or a cancer, either of which kills his patient with nearly identical symptoms. The Odawa healers of the upper Great Lakes use this fungus to treat hemorrhoids - problems arising just a little downstream on the same river of foodstuffs. I find the chaga fascinating  both visually and as a living entity with its own beauty, which is at least partly a function of its power to heal one body and decompose another - two sides of one coin.

We do love to eat and we love our mushrooms. Everything that goes in our mouths seems of particular interest from the first moment of groping around with our little sausage fingers and lips for a breast in that most basic of mammalian instincts. Eating is the most fundamental of needs and pleasures. The variety of sensual experience we
crave in life is especially focused on food; got to have that great variety of tastes that titillate, spices that work the edges of discomfort, funky cheeses aged to the borders of putrescence, imported foods, wild foods, subtle tastes, seasonal fare; anything to keep it interesting. We mushroom hounds stake our fortunes to variety as well - to finding something good in every season. We also like things a little dicey; like to walk the razor's edge and flirt with danger. We sample among foods that others fear to touch; mushrooms that have been found to be toxic unless cooked; fungi that are poisonous to some and harmless to others. The common beefsteak or false morel, (the ear of Judas in Czech), which I grew up eating often contains hydrazine - a toxic substance, which is usually driven off by the heat of cooking. There have been recorded instances, though, when guests have harmlessly consumed a scrumptious meal of false morels, while the cook lay dying in the kitchen from the vapors he'd been inhaling from the saucepan.

I have become much more circumspect about my own mushrooming after a close encounter with the greengill (Cholorphyllum Molybdes). The field guides list this handsome white mushroom, commonly found on lawns, as a fine eating mushroom for some people and poisonous to others. And they warn specifically, that these mushrooms never be sold in markets. Certainly, though, that warning could not apply to me, devoted mushroomer that I am. The greengills looked so good, growing there in the grass. I had to try them, and of course the gods do punish hubris. The tasty morsels set off an eight-hour bout of digestive troubles, as my body furiously expelled all liquids
through every possible opening. Violent diarrhea set in and I vomited convulsively, alternately freezing and sweating, salivating, tearing, urinating - becoming dehydrated and exhausted. I slept it off for another day and learned to be less cavalier about my mushrooming. The dominant (if indirect) cause of most mushroom poisoning, though, is the blusher - a tasty Amanita. Blushers are very similar to several extremely dangerous mushrooms
whose symptoms only appear when it's too late to do much more than to pray and watch your life slip away in agony. I suspect the attraction is akin to the Japanese consumption of puffer fish, whose liver contains a violent neuro-toxin. The truly masterful chef, when requested, can just barely nick the liver in preparation of the fish in an act of brinkmanship that gives the diners a distant brush with death. As the minute dose of tetrodotoxin enters their circulation along with the meal and goes to their nerves, the tingling and numbing sensation on tongue and lips, reminds the diners of the trust they have placed in the chef, as their meal becomes an unforgettable epicurean
Liebestod. Too heavy a hand and the poison will paralyze their muscles as, fully conscious, they eventually die of asphy;{icttion. There is no antidote. Sex or death, poisoning or sustenance; you never know which it will be.

The position of dispassionate observer disappears with the intimacy that eating elicits. Colorful and aromatic forest floor decomposers take on new dimensions of meaning :lrc v.iolently poisonous, hallucinogenic or good to eat Nature and its gifts takes us out of doors to gather that \',ThtCh for a con\Tenient moment, but whose time is now. And now IS something that can never be revisited nor replaced. So, may we enjoy our toadstools and 'v,'(lke up to do so again.
Bon appetite.

The etchings here were made by my own method of taking spore-prints from the mushrooms { .fin,J' and .fi.x'ing them with spray lacquers, through which! f'tch the delicatl::fungal graphic into the zinc plate. I then proceed to inscribe the depictions of mushrooms with a diamond point without any u.)'e of mordants as a drypoint. Two editions were printed: one in Czech and one in English with 25 numbered copies each.

Of the English edition, this one i.)' number

Ladislav R. Hanka      August 2006

About the Trees and Landscapes
 


Million Dollar Oak This magnificent Burr Oak grows in a prairie opening of Southwest Michigan which has today become a suburb of Kalamazoo. This original portaging place from the St Joseph to the Kalamazoo River watersheds conferred a meaningful place-name to Portage. Until recently the landscape was agricultural and dotted with large Victorian farmhouses speaking of successful farmers tilling the deep prairie soils, but now it is a place that grows tract housing and mini-malls. The tree however still thrives; its limbs reaching out and sweeping to the
ground in the signature gesture of an open-grown patriarch. It's been standing here long before there was an incorporated entity of Portage, before Titus Bronson's arrival in the Kalamazoo River Valley, long before there was even a land office in White Pigeon opening up the territory for settlement ? selling what it didn't own. The Bur Oak was once known as the Redwood of the prairies because it survives wild-fire and the native American custom of managing prairies for grazing by periodically burning them. This tree is a living bridge to the civilization preceding
ours and thus very rare.

I have occasionally stopped to admire and draw this tree. Some years ago I noticed a curious mix of historic buildings being relocated to the nearby farm as they were being displaced by shopping malls and housing. An hydro-geology firm set up shop in one of the relocated buildings and the original farmhouse became an office for the nature conservancy. Then I heard that the owner had been offered a million dollars by Walgreens Corporation, but that preferring the company of the big tree, he'd turned them down. We slip so easily into believing that there are no altruistic gestures or selfless people. We don't always know the good they do, but they are here among us,
quietly active in our own community.

Ladislav Hanka 2005
 

 

Ladislav Hanka

EDUCATION

MFA in Printmaking: Western Michigan University 1981
MS in Zoology: Colorado State University 1979
BA in Biology: Kalamazoo College 1975
Guest Student: Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Unversitat Bonn, Germany 1973-78
Hochschule fur Angewandte Kunst, Vienna Austria 1979-80

Private Apprenticeship: Prague, Czechoslovakia: with Jindra Schmidt engraver of
stamps and currency.

TRAVELING EXHIBITIONS

1997-2001 Visions of a Wandering Naturalist -Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon MI;
Ferris State University, Big Rapids, MI; Omphale Artistl Co-op Gallery,
Calumet, MI; University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, Wl; Waterford Area
Cultural Council, Waterford, MI; TOSH Gallery, Houghton MI: Oasis, Artist
Co-op Gallery, Marquette, MI; The ARK, Saugatuck, Michigan; Arts
Council of Greater Ka1amazoo, MI; Chicago Center for the Print,
Chicago IL; Bunting's East-west Gallery, Royal Oak, MI
32 Page catalogue

1993-1999 50 x 25 book arts exhibit; 50 books by L. Hanka bound by 25 leading book binders- Sponsored by the Bridwell Library of Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX, also circulated to Houston Baptist College, and University of California at Los Angeles. 100 page catalogue

1995 Boreal Meditations, Suomi College, Hancock, MI and Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI

1989-1991 USA State Department sponsored exhibit of Artworks by Ladislav and Jana Hanka: Exhibited at the US Consulate in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad)and at Spaso House (US Embassy) in Moscow and subsequently
circulated to the Buryat Museum in Sevir Baikalsk and to municipal art museums and cultural centers in Nizhni Novgorod (formerly Gorky), Dubna, Vladisvostok, and Ulan Ude- all in Russia

1989-2001 County Survey, 18 etchings with handset poetry on themes of land-use and development - individually framed pages exhibited as a group: in Kalamazoo: at City Hall, Kalamazoo College, UWM Public Museum - elsewhere in Michigan: at. Vicksburg, Portage, and Plainwell Public Libraries, Young Community Center in Sturgis, Pine Tree Gallery in Ironwood. Also shown with 50 x 25 in Dallas, Houston- UCLA Rare Books Library and at the Mugar Library of Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts

1992-1993 Alluvial Meditations, Claire Spitler Gallery, Ann Arbor Ml, The Carnegie Art Center in Three Rivers, MI, and the Chicago Center for the Print, Chicago, IL

2002- 2004 Reflections of Superior: Artists under Sail, a group of seven artists' work from sailing around Lake Superior: Little Cities Gallery, art museums at South Haven, Escanaba, Manistee, Thunder Bay, Saginaw, Ferris State University, Finlandia University, and Marquette Library. Fold-out brouchure

SELECTED NON-CIRCULATING ONE-MAN SHOWS

1980s
Foundation for the Friends of the Arts, Bogota, Columbia; USA Embassey &
Malostranska Beseda in Prague, Czechoslavakia; Galerie Prisma, Vienna;
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts; Graphics International, Toronto; International
Print Society, New Hope, PA; Chicago Center for the Print, Chicago, IL

1990s
Saginaw Museum of Art, MI; Chicago Center for Print, Chicago IL; Muske
gon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI, Tropical Wings Nature Center, Sucotz,
Belize; Czech Rebulic: Sumava national Park and Bioshpere Preserve,
Vimpeerk, Municipaal Museum of Art, Prachatice, “Meditatiooons and
Transformations” Urania Gallery, Prague

2000
Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI
The Eastern Bohemian Archive of the Czech Rebulic in Pardubice
16pp Catalogue

2001
Little Cities Gallery, Kalamazoo, MI
Foster gallery, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, WI
Municipal Gallery of Zdar and Sazavou, Czech Republic

2002
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
Serette Nature Center/New Moon Gallery, Benton harbor, MI

2003
Ozaukie Center for the Arts, Cedarburg, WI
Blue Heron Gallery, Elk Rapids MI & Ave. Maria Gallery, Ann Arbor, MI
Newaygo County Council for the Arts, Fremont MI

2004
The Venerable Oak, New Moon Gallery, Benton Harbor, MI

USA PUBLIC MUSEUM COLLECTIONS

Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City Missouri
Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI
Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, Michigan
Dennos Museum of Art, Traverse City, MI
Michigan Artist Collection: housed at Hattie Creek Art Center, Hattie Creek, Michigan
Fort Miami Heritage Society & Museum, St Joseph, MI
Czech and Slovak Heritage Museum, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS; USA UNIVERSITIES

Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard Museum, Cambridge, MA
Princeton University Print Collection, Princeton, NJ
Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ
Birdwell Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX
Mugar Library Special Collections, Boston University, Boston, MA
Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont, Burlington VT
University of Nebraska , Love Library, Lincoln, NE
University of Illinois, Champagne-Urbana, lL
University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Kalamazoo College, Kalamazoo, MI
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI
SW Michigan Community College, Dowagiac, MI
University of Wisconsin at La Crosse and at Eau Claire, WI
Lawrence University, Appleton WI
Ferris State University, Big Rapids, MI
Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI
Suomi College (now Finlandia University), Hancock, MI
Great Lakes Research Collection, Allendale, MI
Alma College, Alma MI
Northern Michigan University, Marquette, MI

OTHER PUBUC COLLECTIONS

'The New York Public Library, New York City, NY
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Newark Public Library, Newark, NJ
National Park Service, Isle Royale National Park Headquarters, Houghton, MI
Isle Royale Natural History Association, Houghton MI
Waterford Area Cultural Council, Waterford, MI
Newaygo Council for the Arts, Fremont, MI
Bronson Methodist Hospital, Kalamazoo, MI
City of Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo, MI
International Dark Sky Associations, Tucson, AZ
Kalamzoo Nature Center, Kalamazoo, MI
Southwest Michigan Nature Conservancy , Kalamazoo, MI

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The National Museum. Prague
The Czech National Archive, Pardubice
Lyra Pragensis, Prague
The State Memorial Collection of the Written Word, Prague
City Museum of Lltomysl, City halls of Zdar nad Sazavou and Stachy
East Bohemiam Museum, Pardubice
West Bohemian Museum, Loket
Museum of Fine Arts Book Binding, Loket
Museum of the Book, Zdar nad Saravou

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS ELSEWHERE ABROAD

Huang Zhe Temple (Buddhist), Sechuan Province, China,
Jatson Chunning Special SchooI, Lhasa, Tibet,
Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
School of Traditional Watersolor Painting, Beijing, China
The British Library, London, Great Britain
Traskoselskaya Collection, Modern Art Museum, Pushkin, Russia..
Tropical Wings Nature Center, San Jose Succotz, Belize
Graphic Arts Institute and Francisco Toledo Museum, Oaxaca, Mexico
The Rembrandt House, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Staedlik Museum, Sint, Belgiume

HONORS


The Bookplate Society, Eubonne, Franc
1998/99 Artist In Residence at Plen-aire Pardubice, Loket, Czech Republic
1997, 2002 Individual Artist's Grants from Arts Foundation of Michigan & Kalamazoo Foundation
1996/90/01 Irving S. Gilmore Foundation Grant for Emerging Artists

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