By Joby Patterson
Norma Bassett Hall (1888-1957) spent the eventful years between the two world wars as a printmaker in Oregon, Kansas, New Mexico, Virginia, and Europe. Wherever she lived, Bassett Hall interpreted the geographic richness of North America and Europe. From the windy coast of Oregon to the rocky pastures of heartland Kansas, from the Indian pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona to the idyllic inlets of Scotland and the hamlets of France, she found a wealth of material to depict on the woodblock. Her color prints capture village walls of rosy warmth, violet skies at transitional hours, and figures in markets, at the wash, or on village streets. Nearly all the prints composing Hall's graphic oeuvre linoleum cuts, woodcuts, and serigraphs have been located, studied, and represented here in more than 110 illustrations. Whether of landscape or figures, American or European, her prints express a brief moment in place and timea temporal vignette through which we can glimpse the past.
