Blake in the Heartland: Online Gallery

Welcome to the gallery page for the exhibit Blake in the Heartland, which ran March 19th to April 9th, 2015 at the Diane Kidd Gallery at Tiffin University. This exhibit was a celebration of the works of William Blake (1757-1827), an English Romantic-era poet and printmaker whose illuminated books continue to inspire poetry, novels, film, and music. Co-organized by Prof. Lee Fearnside and Dr. James Rovira of Tiffin University, the exhibit featured reproductions of William Blake’s works by Dr. Michael Phillips and original work by regional artists Emily Brandehoff and Robert McFate. A full description of the exhibit and related events can be found at the link above. This page links to photographs of works shown in the exhibit and to photographs of the gallery and the opening reception, all of which appear in the grid and in links below. You can also view a page showing photographs of Michael Phillips’s printmaking demonstration.

The pages named after Blake’s works are organized by Blake’s original title. For example, the page “The Chimney Sweeper” provides an image of one of Blake’s original “The Chimney Sweeper” plates, Michael Phillips’s reproduction of it, and Robert McFate’s original work produced as a response to Blake’s “The Chimney Sweeper.” Once on a page, if you click on an image you can see it full size. I also have pages with photographs of Michael Phillips’s printmaking demonstration and photographs from the reception.

Photographs of the artwork were taken quickly on an iPhone 6+ immediately before the exhibit was taken down and are shown by permission of the artists. All works and photographs are copyright of the artists. Images of William Blake’s originals taken from Wikimedia Commons.

I hope you enjoy this online gallery, and please don’t hesitate to contact Dr. James Rovira at jamesrovira at gmail dot com with any questions or comments. You may also email James Rovira if you would like to contact Dr. Michael Phillips about possible lectures and/or printmaking demonstrations, or if you want to contact John McFate or Emily Brandehoff about showing their work in your gallery. I will put you in touch with them.

Scroll down to see thumbnails of the different pages for this exhibit, or you can browse the online gallery using the links below.

Michael Phillips’s Reproductions | Emily Brandehoff’s Works | Robert McFate’s Works | Gallery and Reception Photographs | Michael Phillips Printmaking Demonstration

Works in the exhibit keyed to Blake’s originals

America a Prophecy
Europe a Prophecy
Jerusalem, Plate 84
The Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Title Page
The Songs of Innocence, Frontispiece
“Introduction,” Innocence
“The Lamb”
“Holy Thursday”

“Introduction,” Experience
“Earth’s Answer”
“The Human Abstract”
“The Little Girl Lost” and “The Little Girl Found”
“The Chimney Sweeper”
“The Sick Rose”
“The Fly”
“The Tyger”
“My Pretty Rose Tree,” “AH! Sun-Flower,” “The Lilly”
“London”
“To Tirzah”

I would like to encourage you to visit the William Blake Archive, a large repository of images of Blake’s works supported with new transcriptions, annotations for each image, and the ability to compare different copies of the same image side by side. Also see The Blake Digital Text Project for a full edition of Erdman’s edition of The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake supported by a concordance. The latest Blake scholarship can be found at Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, and links to Blake in popular culture, along with book reviews and a variety of other media, can be found at Zoamorphosis. Please also consider my own scholarship on William Blake in Blake and Kierkegaard: Creation and Anxiety and consider ordering this text for your library.