Planting

Planting situates this abstract woodblock print within the agricultural cycle at its point of origination — the insertion of seed or seedling into prepared soil. Rome's abstract treatment likely emphasizes the gestural, rhythmic quality of planting work: repeated downward marks, horizontal registers suggesting rows, and a vertical tension between the surface of the earth and what lies beneath it. Water-based pigments pressed through a baren into washi produce an intimate, tactile result that corresponds to the direct physical contact between hand and ground that planting requires. The natural materials of the mokuhanga process — carved wood, mineral pigments, plant-fiber paper — echo the organic materiality of the agricultural subject.