Nuuksio 1

Nuuksio is a national park west of Helsinki, a region of glacially worn bedrock, mixed conifer and birch forest, and small lakes — and the title locates this drypoint within the body of Finnish landscapes Ito made during and after her 2011 exchange at Aalto University. The print likely opens the Nuuksio sequence with an establishing view: water seen through the screen of trunks, or the characteristic outcrop of granite rising through forest floor. Drypoint's suitability for this subject lies in its tonal range: the burr left along each scratched line holds enough ink to render the dense atmospheric darkness of Nordic woodland interior, while finer, lighter passes describe the silver-grey bark of birch or the reflective surface of a lake. Within Ito's wider practice, the Nuuksio plates extend her engagement with trees and water from the Japanese frame to the Finnish, treating the same fundamental subjects — rooted vertical mass, reflective horizontal surface — in a different ecological register. The numbered first plate suggests an ongoing series approaching the same site repeatedly, in keeping with her serial method.