Description

Hewit first made lithographs in 1935 and probably learned the technique at the John Huntington Polytechnic Institute in Cleveland where printmaker Kálmán Kubinyi taught. The majority of her lithographs, however, were made at the Summer School of Painting at Saugatuck, Michigan, also known as Ox-Bow. For 16 summers starting in 1937, she studied lithography with Francis Chapin, an instructor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who became director of Ox-Bow in 1943. Lithography allows the artist to work freely, as one draws directly onto the surface of a lithography stone with a greasy crayon or a greasy wash called tusche. Hewit rarely used tusche, preferring the grainy broad strokes of the crayon. But after drawing the design, she often employed a sharp tool to create white accents by scratching into the crayon marks.