Moon in Natural Settings — 68th CWAJ Print Show catalog cover

Date:: 2024
Medium:: Drypoint, engraving, and gold leaf
Image courtesy of: CWAJ Print Show Online Gallery

Description

Selected as the cover image for the 68th CWAJ Print Show catalog in 2024, this drypoint and engraving with applied gold leaf places a moon within an unspecified natural setting — a motif that allows Konno to set burnished metal against the velvety tonal field that incised copper produces under intaglio inking. The drypoint burr holds ink unevenly, yielding the soft, atmospheric blacks characteristic of the technique, while the engraved lines provide the harder structural marks that describe foliage, water, or terrain. The applied gold leaf, laid over the printed sheet rather than into the plate, reads as a discrete surface element: a luminous disc or scattering that interrupts the tonal field and recalls the kinpaku grounds of decorative screen painting. The CWAJ Print Show, run annually by the College Women's Association of Japan since 1956, is one of the country's largest selling exhibitions of contemporary prints, and a catalog cover selection reflects standing within that circuit. The work sits within Konno's continuing engagement with celestial and natural subjects rendered through her hybrid intaglio-and-gold-leaf method.