Water Dance 1 (Dappled Light)

Micah Schwaberow

This Koi pond intrigued Micah enough to create two color woodcuts entitled Water Dance. Koi ponds do better in a shaded area and Micah captured the underwater movement of the Koi and the various shadow patterns cast upon the water lilies and the water surface. Koi is a domestic variant of the Amur carp. These fish have brightly-colored scales with various patterns and most Koi measure about one or two feet long. Even though these fish swim gracefully along the tops of ponds, their natural foraging behavior takes them to the depths of their pond. The water lilies, while highly decorative, are a natural source of filtration for the pond.

Micah Schwaberow, printmaker, painter and sculptor, was born in Eugene, Oregon in 1948. He studied painting with Maurice Lapp and printmaking with Elizabeth Quandt at the Santa Rosa Junior College in California. In 1981, he spent a month in Miasa, Japan studying traditional woodblock printing and, in 1982, he spent most of the year in Nagai, Japan studying with the Japanese master, Toshi Yoshida, and his master carvers and printers. In September of that year, he was an assistant to Yoshida during a three-week woodblock course for foreigners.

Schwaberow has given demonstrations at the University of California Berkeley and at Mills College in Oakland. He produced a number of boxed suites of color woodcuts, including Tuolumne, Book I, which won first prize in a national competition to commemorate Yosemite National Park. In addition to his prints, Schwaberow has included a sculptural element to his list of aesthetic endeavors, creating gourd vessels echoing the figures of birds and landscapes.

Micah Schwaberow’s work was featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is represented by galleries across the United States. His work is in the collections of the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and the Wichita Art Museum. In 2009, his color woodcut, Morning Mist, Heath Township, was The Print Club of Cleveland Publication No. 87.

Micah Schwaberow died on 12 July 2022 in Santa Rosa, California.