1940s Car of the Future I

1940s Car of the Future I is part of a small group in which Dennis turned his woodcut practice toward American mid-century automotive design, treating a streamlined 1940s sedan as a period artifact rather than a contemporary subject. The title's irony — the car of a future that is now decades past — is consistent with the gentle nostalgia that runs through his town and transportation prints. Compositionally, such a print would typically isolate the vehicle in profile or three-quarter view against a flat ground, with the curving fender lines, fastback roof, and chrome trim translated into bold relief-cut shapes. Dennis cut directly into pine, accepting the wood's grain as part of the printed surface, and printed by hand on lightweight paper, so passages of bodywork often carry visible grain texture beneath the ink. The Roman numeral I points to a serial treatment of the motif, a method he used to work through variations on a single subject across multiple blocks.