Society Of Wood Engravers
The 72nd Exhibition At Winchcombe

I have finally managed to catch up with the annual exhibition at Jane Smoczynski's “Winds of Change” Gallery in Winchcombe.  You may have met her yourselves at the gallery or at last year’s picnic.  She has embraced the medium of wood engraving with open arms having already mounted a first rate show of William Rawlinson and then a combined show of the work of Pete Lawrence and Debbie Sutcliffe.  Rather like the well-wishers saying farewell to the Jumblies who planned to set sail in a sieve, we all said “it cant be done” when Jane agreed to hang an entire SWE annual exhibition.

Well, it could and she did it – with style and panache.  Accepted you still needed a certain lissomness of spine to see some of the lower ones and there were four that were really a bit high.  (one lady who’d travelled 100 miles to see the exhibition arrived with a close-focusing monocular which she let me try; it obviated the need for any acrobatics brilliantly).  This isn’t a review of the exhibition, which incidentally I thought excellent in spite of the absence of a contribution from one of our greatest engravers, but more a ‘gallery report’.  Winchcombe’s a delightful town with other attractions as well as good pubs, to have the ‘Winds of Change’ Gallery promoting wood engraving in this way must make the place one of the jewels of the Cotswolds.
Miles Wigfield