Spring Thaw 1939

Louise Arnstein Freedman made this black and white lithograph print called *Spring Thaw.* I’m imagining Freedman, bent over a lithographic stone. I picture her using grease crayons and other tools to build up layer upon layer of tones, to then create this scene of workers hosing down a city street. You can almost feel the cold dampness in the air as the water jets across the road. What’s it like to spend hours making marks to create this vision? The stark contrasts are so effective. Her mark-making feels confident. Even though the scene is very realistic, it’s also somehow stylized. The dramatic and contrasting tones create a sense of depth and space on a flat surface. Freedman shares a way of looking at the everyday with other social realist painters. Artists are in an ongoing conversation across time. Freedman shows us how an embodied form of expression can embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.