Little Michael

Little Michael is a small mokuhanga (26 × 34 cm) printed in an edition of 10, produced by McDonnell at Graphic Studio Dublin in 2020. The print was made for the studio's Kanreki exhibition marking its 60th anniversary, a project whose curatorial brief required every participating artist to incorporate the colour red — a constraint that links the cohort's otherwise varied work to the celebratory red traditionally associated with kanreki (the Japanese 60th-birthday rite). As a water-based woodblock, the sheet would have been printed on dampened washi using nori paste mixed with pigment and a baren, a process that lends mokuhanga its characteristic matte surface and capacity for soft bokashi gradations rather than the heavier, glossier coverage of oil-based relief printing. The work travelled with the Kanreki cohort from The Model in Sligo (2020) to Graphic Studio Gallery in Dublin (April 2021) and on to the 9th International Mokuhanga Conference satellite show at Nara Prefectural Cultural Hall (November–December 2021).