Leonard Baskin x Barry Moser x Rosemary Feit Covey | A Line Through It

Video credit: Keith Forman

The famous illustrator Barry Moser and internationally renowned printmaker Rosemary Feit Covey, met when she was a high school student at Williston Northampton School in Easthampton Massachusetts. Moser was a great influence on Covey and was an early source of encouragement and support. Leonard Baskin the famed sculptor and printmaker also had an impact on the work of both artists. Forty plus years later Moser and Covey met again for a conversation. The conversation lasted over three hours and was recorded. This is a small segment, filmed and edited by Keith Forman and originally presented to Georgetown University Special Collections in conjunction with a pop up exhibit featuring both artists. The longer conversation is available to scholars upon request.

Leonard Baskin ( 1922- 2000 )
Leonard Baskin’s work is included in the collections of most major institutions in the United States. He is recognized as a key contributor to the revitalization of fine art presses. Leonard Baskin was born in 1922 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He studied at New York University, Yale University, the Academie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, the Accademia di Belle Arte in Florence, and the New School. Baskin taught at Smith College from 1953 to 1974 and at Hampshire College from 1984 to 1994. Baskin's work is represented in the collections of major museums in the United States and Europe, including the National Gallery of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. His graphic art and sculpture have been shown in exhibitions in the United States, England, France, and Austria. He is also the recipient of numerous graphic-design awards, including the Special Medal of Merit from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Although sculpture has remained a major part of Baskin's oeuvre, it was through graphic design that he originally gained renown. He has worked extensively with woodcuts, chiefly for book illustration. He is the founder of the Gehenna Press in Massachusetts and has been a major force in the revitalization of small American presses. Baskin's posters and other graphic art are distinguished by a consistently powerful directness in exploring the full range of form and expression.

Barry Moser (1940-)
Barry Moser is an American visual artist and educator, known as a printmaker and founder of the Pennyroyal Press, an engraving and small book publisher founded in 1970. A member of the National Academy of Design, his work is in numerous collections, including The National Gallery of Art, The Metropolitan Museum and The British Museum. He was the 1995 Oates Fellow in Humanities at Princeton; and was a distinguished scholar at the University of Louisville in 2001. Some of his most celebrated work has been his illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, each of which consisted of more than a hundred prints, and the former of which won him American Book Award for design and illustration in 1982. He has illustrated nearly 200 other works as well, including The Bible. He currently serves on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design and Smith College. His works have been displayed in such places as the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, Harvard, and the Library of Congress.

Rosemary Feit Covey (1954-)
Rosemary Feit Covey was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is an experimental printmaker, who works primarily with wood engraving. Solo museum exhibitions have included the Butler Museum of American Art, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts and the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago. In 2014, a retrospective of her, prints, paintings, and installation workwas featured at John Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum. From 2007 to 2008, Covey served as Artist-in-Residence at Georgetown University Medical Center. She has exhibited world wide, including Buenos Aires, Geneva, and with the British Wood Engraving Society in England. Articles on her work have been featured in publications including Art in America, Juxtapoz, and American Artist Magazine. Rosemary Feit Covey’s work is housed in more than forty museum and library collections worldwide, including the original collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the New York Public Library Print Collection, the National Museum of American History, Harvard University, and the Papyrus Institute in Cairo, Egypt. In 2012, over five hundred of her prints were acquired for the permanent collection of Georgetown University Library, Special Collections. This collection encompasses the entire graphic oeuvre of her work from 1967 to 2010.