“Cleveland” — Woodcut by Doris Seidler, ca. 1962

Slimline jet and the “transporation aorta”…

by Paula Bosse

In the early 1960s, Business Week magazine commissioned artists to create works to be used as part of its “Business America” series, an advertising campaign showcasing fifteen American cities and their industries, captured in woodcuts. One of the cities chosen was Cleveland; the artist was British-born Doris Seidler. She had this to say about her piece:

I see Cleveland as a vital, active transportation center. I based my composition on this concept of the city. First, the curve of Lake Erie with its lake steamers; then the railroad tracks, with their open, active forms, leading toward the city. And finally, the jet, reaching across the sky. All three connect Cleveland with the world.

The prints were collected into a book, Woodcuts of Fifteen American Cities from the Business Week Collection. The biography of Ms. Seidler from the book:

Born in London in 1912, Doris Seidler studied printmaking at Atelier 17, the Contemporaries, and Pratt Graphic Workshop in New York.

Miss Seidler has won awards from the Washington Watercolor Club, the Chicago Society of Etchers, the Creative Gallery in New York, and the Print Club of Philadelphia among others.

In addition to woodcuts, Miss Seider works in the oils and in metal plate techniques.

She has exhibited extensively both in America and in Europe. Among US galleries, she has had showings in the Brooklyn Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, and Library of Congress in Washington. Abroad, she has exhibited in the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Redfern Gallery in London.

Miss Seidler’s works are part of the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, Philadelphia Museum of Fine Art, and the Seattle Museum of Art.

And the text of the ad which ran with the woodcut:

Cleveland/Industrial Powerhouse

Cleveland … Transportation aorta, steel base, missile hub. City with a solid economy based on rich resources and an ever-growing industrial diversity. Who’s growing with it? Companies like Republic Steel, Sherwin-Williams, Chesapeake & Ohio, Reliance Electric and Engineering, White Motor. In surging Cleveland, and everywhere in business America, men who manage companies read Business Week. You advertise in Business Week when you want to inform management.

I’ve never been to Cleveland, and I don’t know much about it, but I LOVE this artwork!

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Sources & Notes

The book that features a reproduction of this print is Woodcuts of Fifteen American Cities from the Business Week Collection (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, Inc., 1963). See a larger image of the woodcut here.

Another fantastic print from this collection is the one representing my hometown, Dallas. I wrote about it here.

Ms. Seidler died in 2010 at the age of 97. Her obituary from The Guardian is here.