Holy Smoke

Holy Smoke engages with incense, ritual smoke, or the pervasive presence of cigarette and cooking smoke in Kelly's daily Japanese domestic environment. Smoke as a subject in woodblock printing presents a genuine technical challenge: its translucency and movement must be conveyed through layered color and careful use of bokashi gradation rather than the crisp line more natural to the medium. The title's ironic register — combining the sacred and the mundane — is consistent with Kelly's worldview, which found quiet significance in ordinary objects without elevating them into symbols. Figures are listed alongside still life, suggesting a human presence generating or surrounded by the smoke. The print likely uses a muted, warm palette to convey diffused light filtered through haze.