Dale DeArmond

Dale Burlison DeArmond (July 2, 1914 in Bismarck, North Dakota – November 21, 2006 in Sitka, Alaska) was an American printmaker, author, and book illustrator.

Dale met Robert Neil DeArmond, a native of Sitka, Alaska, while they were classmates at Stadium High School in Tacoma, Washington. They married on July 29, 1935 and lived on a troller in Sitka. In 1938, they moved to Pelican, then to Ketchikan in 1944 and back to Sitka in 1949. They had a son and a daughter.

Her first printed work was for the Sitka Printing Company in 1949. In 1953, the DeArmonds moved to Juneau, where her husband was executive assistant to territorial governor B. Frank Heintzleman. She worked for the Alaska Territorial Library, then for the Juneau city library, where she was director from 1958 to 1979. They moved to the Sitka Pioneer Home in 1991, where they remained.

DeArmond mostly worked in ink and pencil illustrations and oils – something she was unhappy with – until she took a woodcutting workshop with Wisconsin artist Danny Pierce in 1960. She never completed another oil painting again, working solely in woodcuts for a number of years. In 1975, she traveled with fellow Alaskan artists Rie Muñoz and Diana Tillion to France, where she published a number of stone lithograph prints. She continued to dabble in other mediums, including several silkscreens and etchings – a short-lived endeavor as she disliked the caustic materials necessary for these prints. After experiencing difficulties with carving the blocks for her woodcut prints, she took a wood engraving class in 1978. This was her preferred medium until she retired from printmaking in 1999.

Source: "Dale DeArmond." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 4 Oct. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_DeArmond.