Sumi Perera

The portrait of [Sumi](/glossary/sumi) Perera is one of Andrea G. Artz's mokuhanga prints, in which a photographic sitting is reinterpreted through multi-block carving and water-based printing on [washi](/glossary/washi). Each block contributes a single tonal or chromatic layer — a key block for contour and the deeper shadows, additional blocks for flesh, hair, and any background ground — pulled by hand with a [baren](/glossary/baren) so that the pigment is driven into rather than laid onto the paper. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients are typically used at the edges of shadow, softening the transition between blocks and giving the modeled passages of the face their depth. The likeness sits between two visual languages: the descriptive precision of the photograph and the deliberately editorial flatness of woodblock color. Within Artz's wider practice, the Perera portrait is one of the source images that her work moves through on its way from photography to the three-dimensional folded paper portraits and installations that have come to define her recent output.