Artist cuts deep through America's horrors, joys
BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP
Staff Writer

PHOTOS BY MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Robert Emmett Mueller, a Roosevelt woodcut artist, prepares for an upcoming exhibit and displays a print he made from a woodcut of Ben Shahn.

ROOSEVELT - Robert Emmett Mueller believes woodcutting is a social communicator that can help free people.

Born in 1925, Mueller, a resident of the small western Monmouth County town of Roosevelt, uses woodcuts to attack established values and to replace the socially acceptable with a new order.

According to Mueller, woodcuts have always held a high position in the spectrum of revolutionary print expressions. The earliest woodcut prints date back to around 1380 and they have been used over time to express strong human emotions, frequently of a social nature, he said.

Although he studied and created art before he discovered Roosevelt, it wasn't until he met many of the residents in the small borough that Mueller said he realized artists should use their work to react to crises in society, to encourage protest and to fight for economic, political and human well-being.

Artist Robert Emmett Mueller explains the process of woodcutting in his home studio in Roosevelt.

Mueller, 81, graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology only to find science too limiting for his imagination.

As a means to unleash his imagination, Mueller studied abstract expressionism in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s with Myrwyn Eaton and Samuel Adler. Based on his mathematical background, Mueller developed what he calls a mathematico-abstract style of painting, which he still finds personal and important.

However, while Mueller uses his mathematico-abstract style to delve into his own emotions and psyche, he uses woodcutting to explore social views.

The evolution of his woodcuttings and the development of their themes were inspired by Rooseveltians.

While living in New York City and attending New York University, Mueller began visiting Roosevelt with his roommate Joshua Hecht, an opera singer who still resides in the borough.

Born during the Depression, Roosevelt had become something of an artists colony by the time Mueller began visiting with Hecht in 1949.

Mueller found Roosevelt to be "a community with a unique history of social concern." He said Roosevelt residents and artists Ben Shahn and Gregorio Prestopino had a huge influence on his work.

"Shahn and Prestopino were both socially conscious artists," Mueller said. "Their influence pushed me from the abstract into semisocial-type things."

Mueller said he got to know many politically involved people in Roosevelt through Hecht. He had many "long discussions with them and many arguments and enlightenments, which helped me understand just what kind of person and artist I would like to be."

Mueller said that through Roosevelt he "became conscious of human inhumanity, moral and social problems, the depths of degradation, and the heights of elegance over which human nature ranges."

After getting "educated as a human being in the university of Roosevelt," Mueller took to creating realistic images and woodcutting on soft pine.

Fascinated by woodcutting, Mueller said he studied with Antonio Frasconi, a South American artist, in New York.

He had his first woodcut show in 1956. During the Vietnam War, Mueller said, he began to develop a more radical outlook, and he became an activist with

concerns for blacks, the poor, women and youth.

Mueller created a woodcut series called "Disasters of War," which was his reaction to America in the 1960s. One of his most famous woodcuts, "America: Dream Deferred," has 12 prints divided into four triptychs and depicts hell, the dance of death, an apocalypse, a crucifixion, agony, revolts and dances of life.

One of the images depicts Vietnam with bodies strewn on the landscape. Another shows the war machine conquering humanity in a surreal, grotesque, inhumane and automatic manner.

Mueller said he wanted to capture the national mood with "America: Dream Deferred." He wanted to express a surging power wrapped in idealism , but threatened by thoughtless bureaucratic decisions.

When asked if he sees some of the same themes resurfacing in today's society, he said yes.

Mueller also completed a series of prints concerning women titled "Pink Slavery." Recently he did a diptych about America's Iraq imbroglio: "Ravages of Pre-emptive War" and "America's Bitter Presence." His woodcuts are Japanese in spirit.

Mueller said art is a personal thing to him, but at the same time it is a conversation he is having with society.

For Mueller there is no one medium he would call his favorite. In addition to woodcuts, he draws, works in oils and writes novels. He also went through a period of making puppets and violins.

"If I hit a snag, I put a different hat on," the artist said.

With aspirations to keep his mind nimble, Mueller also plays the flute, which he learned as a child, the violin and the viola. In the past, he started two orchestras.

When asked if his parents had artistic talent, Mueller said his father, Hugo Ferdinand, was a pastry baker. His mother, Dora Elisa, was a dressmaker. He had two brothers, Hugo and George, and a sister, who passed away at a very young age.

Mueller met his wife, Diana Lobl, an attorney, in Roosevelt and after he traveled through the Middle East and Egypt, he returned to Roosevelt to marry her. The couple has two grown children, Rachel and Erik.

The Muellers reside in the old farmhouse on Homestead Lane. The farmhouse, which dates back to the 1800s, once served as the borough's first synagogue. Mueller also said its former residents sold clothes and other items out of the home's living room.

When asked if he still thinks about Roosevelt as an artists community, Mueller said, "It may just be nostalgia for a period that doesn't exist anymore."

"There are still a lot of artists here, judging by the number of people in the gallery's shows," he said.

Mueller sees hope in the continuation of Roosevelt as an artistic community through Roosevelt resident Jim Hayden's Eleanor Gallery, which is in the old garment factory.

"I am so pleased, and Jim is such a sweet guy," Mueller said. "I hope he can make it a success."

Hayden said, "Bob's many talents could be likened to the many rings in wood - the many grains and how differently they run."

The Eleanor Gallery will feature an exhibition and rare sale of Mueller's woodcut prints.

"He limits the quantity of each print to a low number and still prints each by hand," Hayden said.

Mueller's prints can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the V&A in London, the Stadt Museum in Berlin, and in many other museums worldwide.

On weekends now through June 10, a large collection of Mueller's woodcut prints may be viewed and purchased at the Eleanor Gallery.

The gallery is at the corner of Oscar Drive and North Valley Road, Roosevelt; the entrance is on North Valley Road.

The gallery

will showcase Mueller's artwork Fridays and Saturdays through June 10 from noon to 5 p.m.

"Come join in this unique opportunity to see these most incredible prints in an uniquely intimate venue in the artist's own town," Hayden said.

For more information contact James Hayden at (609) 918-1233 or at jimdesigns@AOL.com.