Jordan Barnes

Titled for Jordan Barnes, this print belongs to Reed's sequence of mokuhanga sheets dedicated by name to particular individuals — a register with precedent in the [surimono](/glossary/surimono) prints that Edo-period poets, painters, and patrons exchanged as occasion pieces. The water-based Japanese woodblock technique compels a deliberate translation: the named subject must be resolved into a carved key block carrying drawn line and successive colour blocks registered through kentō notches. Brushed-on pigments bound with rice paste are pulled by hand onto dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren), producing the saturated, even fields characteristic of mokuhanga. Reed exhibited at the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara, whose juried exhibition responded to the theme of [sumi](/glossary/sumi). His work of this period treats black ink not as ground or accent but as principal compositional resource, with the carved line itself carrying the burden of image-making and [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) extending the available tonal range.