Satoru Abe

Abe is best known as a sculptor and painter, in which his disctinctive imagery evokes a vision of landscape that is both quietly personal and grandly cosmic in scope. Island-born Abe studied in New York at the Art Students league from 1948-50, and returned to New York in 1956 to live and work until 1971, when he and his family came home to Hawaii to settle. While in New York, Abe produed a number of etchings and woodcuts. His affinity with print media, however, seems based in several things which go beyond the bounds of conventional process. Abe is an artist totally at ease with drawing, whether for the visualization of work to be realized in another medium, or as a tool for creating an independent visual statement. Abe the sculptor has also developed ways for working with both metal and wood in which surface treatments sugggest the possibility of printing matrices. (transcribed from Honolulu Printmakers gift print documentation, 2000)