Sarah

This second portrait of Sarah continues Lyon's practice of returning to the same sitter across multiple states and compositions, much as Edo-period print designers reissued favorite subjects in altered settings. Like its companions, the print is a mokuhanga produced from CNC-cut cherry blocks, with each plate corresponding to a single tonal layer drawn from a photographic source. Lyon hand-pulls each impression with a [baren](/glossary/baren) onto long-fibered [kozo](/glossary/kozo) [washi](/glossary/washi), building the image up through transparent overlays of [sumi](/glossary/sumi) and pigment so that the figure emerges from the paper rather than sitting on top of it. The repetition of the Sarah subject across distinct prints allows comparative reading: changes in pose, scale, or palette become visible as deliberate variations rather than as separate works. Within the broader contemporary mokuhanga movement — driven in North America by groups around the International Mokuhanga Conference and artists trained, as Lyon was, by Hiroki Morinoue — these portraits represent one of the most sustained efforts to push the medium toward photographic likeness without abandoning the hand-printed surface.