Summer

Summer is an abstract mixed-media print that combines mokuhanga, silkscreen, and intaglio passages overlaid with plant-based pigments — likely the indigo, madder, and yellow-flower dyes Jung works with in her natural-pigment practice. The seasonal title suggests a chromatic rather than representational reading: warm vegetal yellows and saturated greens that the mokuhanga component can carry as [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations, brushed by hand into the dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) before pulling impressions with a [baren](/glossary/baren). Silkscreen layers contribute flatter, opaque fields that contrast the absorbent transparency of the woodblock pulls, while intaglio lines bite incised structure into the surface. The technical stacking is characteristic of Jung's hybrid studio output, in which she treats the four print media she teaches at the University of Iowa as a single continuous palette rather than separate disciplines. Within the broader contemporary mokuhanga movement, her work sits alongside that of artists such as Karen Kunc and April Vollmer who have helped establish a recognizable American mokuhanga vocabulary that retains the medium's water-based registration logic while abandoning its historical figurative subject matter.