Sally Weatherill

This portrait belongs to Andrea G. Artz's ongoing series in which photographic studio sittings are translated into mokuhanga, the Japanese water-based woodblock technique. Sally Weatherill is likely captured in a frontal or three-quarter view, registered through a sequence of carved cherry-wood blocks and printed on [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren). Artz's process renders photographic tonality through flat color planes, soft [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients applied wet-into-wet on the block, and the slight registration variation inherent to hand-pulled multi-block work. Where a photograph fixes a single instant, the woodblock slows the image, asking the viewer to read each color pass as a separate decision about likeness. The portrait connects to Artz's wider concern with the human figure as a translatable surface — the same sittings inform her three-dimensional folded paper portraits exhibited as filigree installations. As a single sheet, this print offers the pre-dimensional version of that practice: photography compressed back into the analogue grain of carved wood and absorbent paper.