Woodcut
Dale DeArmond
Artist's Edition: 35
Edition of Artist Proofs: 5
Paper type: Tableau
Print size: 12" x 18 ⅜"
Image size: 10" x 15"
Editor's note: this was the only black-and-white print in the Raven series. For more info, click here.
The following contains some graphic thematic elements:
Walking along the beach, hungry Raven spots a fat deer, making his mouth water. He calls out, asking which animals and birds want to join him in his canoe. Axkwali (big fat buck deer) asks, "How about me?" "You are just the one I’m looking for," says Raven. They come across a certain steep rocky ravine. "Hey, Axkwali," says Raven, "watch now, I show you something. I got a new way to get across places like this." He lays dried wild celery stalks across that ravine and makes a little bridge, which he covers with moss to make it look solid. He lightly hops across it and it don't break. "What are you waiting for, Axkwali?" Deer looks uneasily at the bridge, but he's got no sense and gallops to it. As soon as he gets on the bridge, he goes to the bottom and busts his head to pieces on them rocks.
"Oh, oh, what a terrible thing to happen! Whoever would have thought my fine bridge would break so easy? Poor old Axkwali. Waste not, want not. Where shall I start, heads or tails?" Hungry Raven starts skinning that poor dumb deer and eats him entirely. Afterwards, after Raven flies out of the valley and meets the birds, he tells them "someone has pounded Axkwali on the rocks down there and busted his head and he's dead. I been hopping and walking all around him down there ever since he died. Couldn't do a thing for him."
Original price: $10.00