William Blair stepped to the door pulling off ink-blotted latex gloves, revealing his aged hands.
These hands, which had been printing images from copper plates, were once used to perform intricate hand surgery.
Blair is more than an artist — he was once a hand surgeon at UI Hospitals and Clinics. The two seemingly disparate qualities may not be so different.
“I think it’s not that terribly uncommon,” the lanky 61-year-old said, sitting in the Lasansky Gallery in Iowa City among his varied prints. “I think there may be more crossover than people appreciate.”
Blair always had a love and passion for the arts, but when it came time to pick a major in college, he chose science — something he was good at.
In medical school, he eventually began training in orthopedic surgery — later specializing in hands — attracted by the problem solving that came with it.
“I thought, ‘I think I can do that,’ ” he said about becoming a hand surgeon.
Now retired from time with the operating table — and currently working at a private practice — he has a little more time. Outside of work, Blair intaglio prints — the process of engraving metal plates, inking them, and pressing the image to paper — at the Lasansky Gallery. He spends his nights in his home studio drawing, preparing plates and engraving. The result is abstract, maybe with a mixture of lines forming a figure.
Blair’s daughter, Lindsay Warren, recalled her father going upstairs to paint at night after work. Her father’s resulting product reflects the man’s profession, she said.
“I haven’t really seen anything like it, and it seems very meticulous and very detail-oriented,” said Warren, who lives in Madison, Wis. “I think that kind of reflects his personality. He’s very thorough in what he does, and I just see that through his artwork. He was very neat and very orderly. I think as a surgeon you have to be pretty detail-oriented and meticulous.”
Jon Fasanelli-Cawelti, a friend and fellow featured artist at the Lasansky Gallery, said a background in surgery brings a new perspective.
“I think it’s very interesting when someone is highly trained in another field,” Fasanelli-Cawelti said. “He brings something special from that little world. It really reflects in his work.”
Blair said he was always attracted to abstract, expressionist art, remembering visits to museums in Europe, his art courses in college, and how he was attentive to different vibrant colors, like those in a garden.
His own painting began “decidedly nonfigurative,” but when he began to use his hands more in his drawing and printing, it became “decidedly figurative work.”
“I have an intense interest in my art,” Blair said. “It preoccupies much of my energy and my time and my thought process. It has evolved significantly over the past two years, and I hope it continues to evolve and interest me in a way that I have not yet imagined.”