Dammerung

Dämmerung, the German word for twilight or dusk, places Jesse's multinational background directly in the title of this mokuhanga accordion-fold artist book. The crepuscular subject — that transitional interval between daylight and dark — suits mokuhanga's particular optical character: water-based pigments on [washi](/glossary/washi) produce surfaces that absorb rather than reflect light, and the soft gradations possible with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) technique can evoke the slow bleed of color across a dimming sky. The accordion format introduces a reading sequence that mirrors twilight's own duration, unfolding incrementally from one state to another. Figures appear within abstracted grounds, suggesting human presence in an atmospheric rather than anecdotal way. The use of a German title in a Japanese-technique work made by a Japanese-American artist encapsulates Jesse's deliberately cross-cultural practice, which refuses to settle into any single national or formal tradition while drawing fluently on all of them.