Shane Foley

Shane Foley, from Reed's MANZ - Medal Art New Zealand series, honors the New Zealand medallist and coin designer. As the closing print in the medal-art portion of the set, the work likely engages directly with Foley's specific discipline — the relief portrait, the inscribed border, the tightly composed reverse — translating those conventions into mokuhanga's planar vocabulary. The carved block and the struck die are kindred relief technologies, and Reed's print exploits that affinity, using [kento](/glossary/kento)-registered impressions on dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) to mimic the precise edge work of the medal. Made for the 2021 IMC juried exhibition in Nara under the sumi theme, the work would foreground black ink, with tonal depth produced through [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) and the burnishing pressure of the [baren](/glossary/baren) rather than through [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) color overlays. Across the MANZ series Reed pairs each New Zealand artist's medium with the printed surface; the Foley portrait closes that conversation by presenting the medallist through a print tradition that shares his fundamental gesture — pressing a carved matrix into a receiving substrate to leave a considered mark.