The essay is followed by lush color reproductions of all of the prints, which haven’t previously been illustrated in full in a single publication. Seen together, Asawa’s keen interest in reversal and sequencing becomes clear. She created four distinct portraits of her father, Umakichi, by altering the same stone: in the first, his bright face emerges from a dark surround; in the second, additional ink has been applied to the negative space so that his features appear to glow; in the third, flowers have been added to the background, and in the fourth, the relationship of negative and positive space has been reversed through a transposition technique executed by the printer, so that Umakichi now appears as a darkened form against a light background. As a result of these subtle, progressive changes, each portrait vibrates on its own emotional register. Similarly, Asawa produced three different versions of the same composition, a highly detailed still life of chrysanthemums in a pot, with varied cropping and colors.
The vast majority of the prints depict either flora or family members, though a select few venture into wilder territory: a nude woman reading a book atop a heap of billowing shapes, an owl shooting out from the darkness, an abstract composition crowded with reticulated blobs and inked in bubblegum pink. Asawa’s meticulous craftsmanship, evidenced in the tiny forms that make up her looped and tied-wire sculptures, is on view in the repeated shapes that make up her depictions of succulents, nasturtiums, hydrangeas, chair caning, and striped fabric. Charming portraits of her sons are rendered through economic clusters of line, while the twelve prints in the portfolio “Flowers” showcase Asawa’s facility with color and shading.
While the Asawa retrospective has its own hefty catalogue, this book honors Asawa’s time at Tamarind as a pivotal part of her artistic trajectory, both separate from and apiece with her work in three dimensions. In line with the expanding focus on the artist-printer relationship in contemporary print scholarship and display, Manes and Tylcz underscore Asawa’s close collaboration with Tamarind’s seven printers (Kinji Akagawa, Ernest de Soto, Robert Evermon, Ole Jürgen Fischer, Walter Gabrielson, John Rock, and Clifford Smith), noting their contributions in the essay and naming the printer responsible for each work within the checklist. The printers’ technical knowledge pushed Asawa in new directions, and their convivial relationship is underscored by a photograph towards the close of the book, which shows a laughing Asawa surrounded by Tamarind printers in Groucho glasses. Through its succinct focus on one chapter in Asawa’s career, the publication solidifies the Tamarind prints as a body of work abundantly worthy of independent examination and appreciation.