THE DISH
Treasured Landscape Artist Honored
Woodblock and letterpress artist Tom Killion, MA ’80, PhD ’85, received the 2017 Marin Cultural Treasure Award. Killion, who grew up in Marin County, has been interested in Japanese-style woodblock artists, especially Katsushika Hokusai, since his youth. His first book, published in 1975 soon after he graduated from college, featured Marin’s Mount Tamalpais. “It’s such a beautiful place,” notes Killion, who received the award in part for his support of Marin Center cultural programs. He is a longtime art judge and exhibitor at the Marin County Fair.
Recently, Killion has been working on treescapes. Most of his prints focus on California landscapes, but after earning a PhD in African history, he published Walls, a collection of sketches from his travels in Europe and Africa. A full-time artist since 2002, he worked previously at a camp for Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees in Sudan and as a history educator. •
