Ann Robinson

A portrait whose title names a contemporary individual rather than a type figure. The New Zealand cast-glass artist Ann Robinson, born 1944, is a senior figure in Pacific studio craft; if the print depicts her, it joins a thread of cross-medium artist portraiture running through the named subjects in this series. Mokuhanga's water-based pigments and [baren](/glossary/baren)-burnished impressions onto absorbent kozo [washi](/glossary/washi) yield a soft-edged tonal surface well suited to portraiture, where the printmaker controls the depth of shadow through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation worked directly across the block face during printing. For the 2021 IMC exhibition organized around the theme of [sumi](/glossary/sumi), prints submitted to the juried show typically foregrounded the carbon ink's tonal range over polychrome decoration, returning to the monochrome lineage that precedes the late-eighteenth-century rise of [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) color printing. Reed's participation places his practice within the international mokuhanga community that gathers triennially in Japan to share technique and exhibit work outside the commercial print circuit.