FOCUS: Tom Kilion / California's Wild Edge

Selected from Inverness artist Tom Killion’s forty-year career as a printmaker and juxtaposed with words from eminent California poets and writers, the works in this exhibition celebrate the power and beauty of the Northern California coastline, from Mendocino to Big Sur. Inspired by his adventures hiking California’s wild landscapes and beyond, Killion is highly regarded for his complex and labor-intensive woodblock printing process influenced by Japanese masters and European printmaking techniques. Each carefully crafted print passes through the press repeatedly as multiple hand-carved woodblocks create the vibrantly colored graphic layers for which Killion is known. Works in this exhibition are featured in Killion’s latest book, his third collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winning poet Gary Snyder, California’s Wild Edge: The Coast in Prints, Poetry and History.

A lifetime resident of Marin, Killion published the first of his numerous books in1975. He earned a Ph.D. in African History from Stanford University in 1985 and was a Fulbright professor at Asmara University in Eritrea in 1994, all while continuing to produce art and publish books. His work is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally and has been featured on PBS.

*Periodically, Bolinas Museum presents a FOCUS exhibition featuring a mid-career Coastal Marin artist with an established body of work.