Ted Johnson’s woodcut prints of cathedrals will be featured at Ottawa Folklore Centre on Bank Street.
Ottawa artist Ted Johnston, who creates woodcut prints of scenes from across the city, will have his work displayed through Jan. 7 at Ottawa Folklore Centre’s gallery.
Woodcut is an old form of printmaking. It requires a block of wood and a design engraved along the grain. To create the print, the block’s surface is covered with ink and pressed onto paper.
Johnston says that because he had a job and family he started his woodcut printmaking after retirement. Johnston worked in a variety of journalistic and public affairs pursuits in Canada and Europe before joining the department of External Affairs in 1966. He retired from Canada’s foreign service in 1999.
Johnston says the amount of precision that creates the print is something people tend to admire.
He says one print titled Wellington Street that’s exhibited at the gallery used a block with six different images. Johnston says the notion to rename Wellington Street, three years ago, inspired the print, which portrays buildings like the former U.S. embassy and the Victoria building.
Johnston says local prints carry more meaning for Ottawa residents. Visitors will feel a sense of attachment to the scene whether it is the six buildings of Wellington Street or Standing Guard below the Peace Tower.
His work focuses on architecture.
“Architecture lends itself particularly to woodcut prints because it’s a matter of outline. It started with the churches of Ottawa series.”
Johnston says the churches are an on-going process and so far, he has created over 60 prints of Ottawa churches.
Johnston started the series because he felt churches in Centretown do not get enough attention for historical significance.
“They’re lost in the urban core. You’ve seen them once and then that’s it. By doing this series on Centretown churches I hope to get people to focus a little bit more.”
Describing his monochrome print of Christ Church Cathedral, Johnston says he admires the church because of its dominant position at the end of Sparks Street. He also admires the church because its parishioners and leadership have always played important roles in Ottawa life.
Johnston wants people to not only think of them as significant pieces of architecture but as actors in the development of Ottawa.
“Each of the churches in Centretown has active social programs that aid the less fortunate in the community,” Johnston says. “You will find that the social or political activism has been an adjunct to their religious worship.”
“The print represents something worth recording,” he adds.
Mary Ann Varley, artist and past-president of ArtEast, a non-profit organization promoting visual arts in Ottawa, says that producing a woodcut print requires patience and precision. She says that it’s painstaking because if a mistake is made the artist has to get a new piece and start again.
“You have to have a vision of where you're going to be and you have to have the skill to get there. That’s what Ted has,” Varley says.
“He does very intimate work. You are able to see the detail and appreciate the imagery,” she says. “We would love to see more people choose local artists and more original artwork of Ottawa.”
Shirley Yik, a member of the Ottawa-Gatineau Printmakers Connective, says she feels Johnston’s prints showed “a part of history that could easily be lost and dismissed in this fast-paced world.His prints seem to tell me to stop for a moment and think of where we come from.”