Boboli View #3

Kathryn Metz

"Boboli View #3" is one of a series of woodcuts Metz did in 1986, inspired by the landscape of the Boboli Gardens, at the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy. The large gardens, covering an area of 111acres, is a real open-air museum with sculptures of various styles and periods, ancient and Renaissance that are distributed throughout the garden. It also has large fountains and caves, among them the splendid Buontalenti grotto built by the artist, architect, and sculptor Bernardo Buontalenti between 1536 and 1608 who adapted his design to the glacial erosion of the underlying sandstone, limestone, and igneous rocks into low, undulating hills, covered extensively by glacial deposits.

Using hundreds of gouged horizontal lines Metz creates a modulating composition, kind of a pointalist approach. The thickness and spacing of the gouges create the values and shapes that bring the horizontal character of the gardens to life. Because of her long teaching career Kay Metz was not involved in creating work for the market and her editions tend to be very small, if the work is even editioned.

Kathryn (Kay) Erma Metz, painter and printmaker, was born in Dayton, Ohio on September 3, 1932. She received her BFA from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and her MA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Between 1966 and 1967, she studied intaglio with S.W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris under the auspices of the College Art Study Abroad, American Center for Students and Artists, and then lithography with Master Printer Robert Blackburn in New York.

Metz's teaching experience began at Phoenix College in Arizona in 1964. She was part-time faculty at the New York University School of Education, New York City between 1967 and 1969, moving then to the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota. After a brief teaching stint at the University of California Extension in Los Angeles she was hired in 1971 to teach printmaking at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was a Professor Emerita after retiring in 1992.

Kay Metz died in Santa Cruz, California on September 27, 2018