Sam Hodge

Sam Hodge is depicted in a portrait drawn from one of Andrea G. Artz's photographic sittings, then transferred through a sequence of carved blocks into mokuhanga. Each block carries a separate tonal value or color zone, hand-burnished into [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren) so that the pigment sits within rather than upon the fibers. Skin tones in Artz's portraits tend to be built from two or three superimposed passes rather than a single flat field, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) softening the transition along the jawline and the side of the face. The likeness depends on the carver's editing of photographic information: mid-tones are flattened, contour is emphasized, and small inflections of expression are preserved by the precision of the line block. Within Artz's practice, the Hodge portrait sits beside her three-dimensional paper figures, where similar prints are folded and reassembled into nearly weightless sculptural objects. As a flat sheet, it documents the moment before that transformation, holding the sitter as a planar woodblock image rather than a constructed form.