Eynhallow Sound

Kathryn Metz

Kathryn (Kay) Metz studied printmaking with both S.W. Hayter and Robert Blackburn and went on to have a 21 year career teaching printmaking at the University of California in Santa Cruz.

"Eynhallow Sound" is one of a series of woodcuts Metz did in 1993, inspired by the landscape of the Scottish Islands of Orkney, a group of around 70 islands. Using hundreds of gouged horizontal lines Metz creates a modulating composition. The thickness and spacing of the gouges create the values and shapes that bring the horizontal character of the water to life.

"Eynhallow Sound"is a seaway that flows the island of Rousay and Mainland Orkney. There is a small, uinhabited island in the sound called 'Eynhallow.' The sound itself is associated with tales of vanishing islands, a Norse giant and a "cacophony" of waves, some of which Metz captures in this image.

The Orkney Islands were fashioned by glacial erosion of the underlying sandstone, limestone, and igneous rocks into low, undulating hills, covered extensively by glacial deposits. The Orkney island of Mainland has stone breakwaters (the Churchill Barriers) which create havens for wildlife; an ancient ring of standing stones and an uncovered 5000 year old Neolithic village composed of horizontal stones, next to the Bay of Skaill.

Kathryn (Kay) Metz, painter, printmaker and educator, was born in Dayton, Ohio on 3 September 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 with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris under the auspices of the College Art Study Abroad at the American Center for Students and Artists. She continued independent studies with Philip Guston and 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 briefly teaching at the University of California Extension in Los Angeles, Metz was hired in 1971 to teach at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she established the Printmaking Department. Highly influential as a teacher, she trained and inspired generations of artists until her retirement in 1992. She helped found the Watsonville Wetlands Watch and was especially concerned with protecting and restoring Elkhorn Slough.

Metz exhibited extensively and was awarded residence grants at the Huntington Hartford Foundation, Pacific Palisades in 1965, and a residence fellowship at MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire in 1966-1967.

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