I first visited Provincetown in 1987. For years, I admired white-line woodblock prints. A Provincetown printmaker (Joan Barron) told me, “I could teach you how in a day.” My life as a physician was too busy at the time, but I never forgot what she said. After I retired from Harvard Medical School in 2017, I began my own printmaking practice. Developed around 1915 by members of the Provincetown Printers—most notably B.J.O. Nordfeldt, Ada Gilmore, and Blanche Lazzell—this method revolutionized printmaking by using a single carved block with gouged lines separating hand-painted color areas, producing a luminous watercolor-like image bordered by the signature white lines. Influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e prints and European Modernism, the Provincetown Print distilled complex traditions into an accessible and distinctly American form, often capturing the Cape’s coastal life and spirit through bold shapes, flattened perspective, and intimate subject matter. I aim to honor the tactile, meditative nature of white-line printing while pushing boundaries through abstraction and expanded palettes. I ask viewers to explore how this Provincetown-born art form continues to evolve—bridging past and future, tradition and reinvention—with each carved line.
Events
Artist Demo: White-Line Woodblock Prints with Darrell Smith
Darrell Smith learned white-line woodblock printing at the Provincetown Art Association Museum (PAAM). Kathryn Lee Smith (no relation) was his first teacher, and she learned the technique from her grandmother Ferol Sibley Warthen, who learned from Blanche Lazzell. Smith completed the Teaching Artist Development Program at PAAM in 2022. His yearly workshops at PAAM’s Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Museum School routinely sell out. He regularly exhibits his work as a member of the American Color Print Society in the Philadelphia area. Smith’s work has been shown in juried exhibitions at PAAM, The Pontiac Creative Arts Center, and at Art Wellesley. In 2020, one of his prints was selected by the jury for the 50th annual Cherokee Trail of Tears Art Show held in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. In August 2022 he was featured in a show at Julie Heller Gallery East, Provincetown. His first solo show at Provincetown Commons was April 2023, with another solo show at the Wellesley Free Library in May 2024. Most recently, he was included in a group show (Lines in Time) at the Provincetown Commons in October 2025.