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 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 with a 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. 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 extending the available tonal range.