The Giant Clam, 1963
by Dale DeArmond (1914-2006), American
framed woodblock print
21" high x 17" wide x 1" deep
Dale F. Burlison was born in Bismarck, North Dakota in 1914. She 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 illustration 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.[2] DeArmond died in Sitka, Alaska.
DeArmond mostly worked in ink and pencil illustrations and oils, until she took a woodcutting workshop with Wisconsin artist Danny Pierce (artist) 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 Munoz 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.
Dale passed away peacefully in Sitka, Alaska in 2006. Her ashes were scattered across the waters of her beloved Sitka Sound.
