October 1, 2024 - October 31, 2024

The Blue Hill Public Library will present Welcome to Grackledom, an exhibit of limited-edition linocut prints by Belfast artist and poet Leslie Moore in the library’s Britton Gallery and Howard Room for the month of October. The public is invited to a reception at the library for the show on Saturday, October 12, 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Leslie Moore is a printmaker whose subjects are often animals, mostly birds. She calls herself an “accidental bird watcher.” Moore doesn’t keep life lists, doesn’t chase rare sightings, doesn’t own a fancy pair of binoculars—she just pays attention to birds. On daily walks with her dog in the local park, along rocky shores, on mountain trails, and through city streets, she keeps her eyes and ears open. All her animal art rises from chance encounters—the strut of a grackle, the swoop of an osprey, the antics of a crow. Images and impressions lodge in her mind’s eye until she turns them into prints. According to Leslie Moore, “My work is a celebration of the animals I meet.”

Moore’s linocuts are influenced by Japanese printmakers, especially Ohara Koson (1877-1945). She doesn’t use the Japanese multi-woodblock technique (mokuhanga). Instead, she practices the reduction method, cutting a single linoleum block and printing a succession of colors—one after the other, one on top of the other—until the image is finished and the block is reduced to almost nothing. There’s no going back.

Moore is also a poet and her two art forms go together in her books, Grackledom (2023) and What Rough Beasts (2021), both by Littoral Books. “The tradition of the poet/artist goes back at least to William Blake and his Tyger,” writes Carl Little in The Café Review. “Moore carries it on with her knock–out combo of verse and linocuts.” Her art may also be found in other book illustrations and cover designs, private collections, at the Local Color Gallery in Belfast, and in the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor. She will read a couple of poems at the reception on October 12.

A resident of Brooksville for 20 years, Moore’s last solo exhibit at the Blue Hill Public Library was in 2013— “Brooksville Bestiary.” She now lives in Belfast with her husband, Tom Moore, a former Belfast Poet Laureate, and her muse, Rumi, a cockapoo. She works in a printmaking studio in her backyard and may often be found gallery-sitting at Local Color Gallery. The exhibit is available for viewing, subject to the Howard Room meeting schedule.