Marté Szirmay

A mokuhanga portrait of New Zealand sculptor Marté Szirmay, whose practice in welded steel and bronze is recast here in the language of carved blocks and inked [washi](/glossary/washi). Reed's portrait method favours flat planes of tone over linear modelling, so Szirmay's features would be defined by the silhouettes left by the carved keyblock against the unprinted paper. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) transitions can be expected across the face, achieved by brushing graded [sumi](/glossary/sumi) directly onto the dampened block before pulling the impression with a [baren](/glossary/baren). The absorbency of washi gives the black its matte depth, and the registration of multiple blocks supplies any subsidiary tone. Made in proximity to the 2021 IMC sumi conference in Nara, the print likely keeps to a near-monochrome palette. Within Reed's portrait series of New Zealand artists, Szirmay's inclusion documents a sculptor of geometric abstraction inside the same printmaker's idiom that records painters and figurative sculptors elsewhere in the sequence.