Street Sheet, San Francisco's newspaper for the homeless, regularly publishes Hazelwood’s prints. In addition, two books of his woodcuts have been published, Forest Song and Promenade - A Voyeur's Guide to America. The magazine Small Press called Promenade "a strangely moving, intensely graphic view of the promenade of daily life in our country." His first public art commission, an outdoor mural, was completed in 2000 in Vallejo California, at the Vallejo Community Arts Foundation. It is 110 feet long and depicts the arts and modern muses. Hazelwood recently completed a series of 60 woodcut prints illustrating his travels throughout Asia called, Walking up and down in Asia.

The following is what Art Hazelwood says about his work: “I arrived at my present style through a curious series of stages. I began with an almost primitive, nature-art, and moved successively onward as if tracing an evolutionary path. I only gradually became aware of the contemporary world. First I painted animals, then nudes in a landscape, then clothed people. Gradually, with no premeditation, I found myself painting the world of today.

“Once I discovered the world in front of me through art, I was ripe to see it in person and began to travel through Asia and America. My book of 26 woodcuts of America, titled Promenade - A Voyeur's Guide To America, is the result of one such trip. In this series of woodcuts, I represent the sights of daily life - from homecoming parades, to nude dancers, to Chicago on the day of the 1987 stock crash.

“After that I lived in Tokyo and then Vienna and traveled quite a bit through Asia. I broadened my field of vision, but my focus remained the events of daily life. My subjects grew to include Moroccans eating kebabs in a public square, Chinese drinking in teahouses, prostitutes on the street in Vienna, and Japanese in Karaoke bars. The common sights of everyday life continued to amaze me.

“On my return to America I took up residence in San Francisco where my world-view took on an increasingly gloomy cast. This made for a series of violent paintings and prints expressing my darkening vision of America. I have tried to represent the chaos and disorientation of this society through paintings inspired by events in the news. The ubiquitous violence of American culture has served as a perverse muse. The feeling of voyeurism, which is ever present in my work, has brought out a good deal of dark humor in my art. I painted several versions of the Tailhook Scandal, with its modern bacchanalian overtones. Another painting, "Purse Snatcher Beaten By Crowd," brings together a group of everyday people in an act of mass hysteria.

"I continue to be inspired by scenes of everyday life. A strange situation on the street strikes me and I work to recreate it. I recently finished a painting of a funeral procession through the Chinese neighborhood in which I live. The funeral musicians, the motorcycle cop, the silent relatives, and the curious bystanders are all squeezed together in the painting. Some might call it a documentary approach to art, but my intention is to reproduce my feelings and not the actual event. I do not use photos to reproduce the event but try to retain my own subjective point of view. I see myself as a witness to life and I see the role of the artist as one of bearing witness to what has been seen and felt.”

More information on the artist is available at http://www.arthazelwood.com/.