Micah is a Santa Rosa artist, noted for exquisitely rendered miniature works. His training includes time spent at the atelier of Toshi Yoshida, learning traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking, as well as studying painting with Maury Lapp and printmaking with Elizabeth Quandt-Barr. He has taught both in California and Japan, and had work included in special edition letterpress books. Since his return from Japan in 1983, Miach’s prints have been relatively small in scale, and offer disctinctively soft images--both in landscapes and figure studies.

Micah has also produced several boxed suites of artwork. One such set, "Tuolumne, Book I" won first prize in a nationwide competition to commemorate Yosemite National Park. In each of these small gems, Micah says he is "trying to make woodblock prints that don’t look like woodblock prints, the wood and the knife invisible, the colors and edges as soft and resonant as a watercolor. I think of my work as color haiku, large places carefully compressed, intimate glimpses through small windows."

In his figurative work, Micah celebrates the model--both in repose and freely moving in dance. These prints are usually more monochromatic than the landscapes, with fewer blocks and steps in printing. Yet in each the artist expresses a wealth of meaning, with the use of only a few lines, and subtle shadings. They can be joyful, serene, playful, or meditative, but in each Micah Schwaberow is eminently successful in capturing the human spirit in all its myriad manifestations.

The Gourd Vessels are a result of Micah’s fondness for collecting objects during walks in the woods or on the beach. After drying, the gourds are cleaned, scraped, carved, dyed, waxed and polished, and then combined with the found objects--such as vines, stones, driftwood, or seed pods--to create the final piece.

Selected Exhibitions:
Independents Exhibition of Prints, Kanagawa, Japan
One person show, California Museum of Art, Santa Rosa
Yoshida Hanga Academy Exhibitions, Tokyo, Japan
One person show, Palo Alto
Small Windows Exhibition, Mill Valley
One person show, Mills College, Oakland
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park
Yosemite Renaissance IV
National Print Exhibition, Clinton, New Jersey
Mini Print Internation de Cadaques, Barcelona, Spain Ren Brown Collection, Bodega Bay
National Small Print Exhibition, University of Wisconsin, Kenosha

Collections:
Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco
Private collections throughout the USA, Japan, and Europe