Kumi Machida "Snow Day -long night-" (Framed)

This work is a newly produced woodcut print based on Snow Day (2008, collection of the National Museum of Art, Osaka *), with adaptations made from the original. Master carvers and printers who carry on the traditional techniques of woodcut printing created this edition. The artist spoke about her vision for this work and about the imagery associated with each background color.

“The original Snow Day contains no specific indication of time, place, or emotion beyond its title, which tells us it is set in the snowy season. It is a work premised on the viewer’s freedom of interpretation. However, when I was shown woodcut prints previously produced by the Adachi Institute of Woodcut Prints, I was struck by how completely the impression could change when the same image was printed in different colors. When turning my monochromatic work into a woodcut print, I began wondering whether placing color in the background might allow me to express emotions that arise under particular conditions. I felt that Snow Day was especially suited to exploring this possibility. In the original work, I applied gradations of diluted ink along the outlines. In this woodcut print, the printer made full use of bokashi (gradation) to create atmospheric shading and a sense of volume distinct from the original. Whereas the original suggests the unique brightness of a snowy day (whether it is clear or overcast), in the woodcut prints I wanted the different background colors to evoke the nighttime hours from dusk through dawn. It is at night that I tend to feel certain strong emotions.”
Snow Day -first light- : “The pale, delicate blue of the sky just before sunrise, the hushed air, the moment before sunlight begins to stream in—it is the color of the sky at the start of the day, a time that can feel hopeful yet faintly bittersweet.”

*Reference: Kumi Machida, Snow Day, 2008. Blue ink, pigment, mineral pigment, pencil, and colored pencil on kumohada mashi (cloud-skin hemp paper).