Johns began experimenting with printmaking early in his career and quickly mastered the medium, using traditional techniques to produce innovative works. Usuyuki is one of a series he created in collaboration with Simca Print Artists in the early 1980s. These technically impressive works feature Johns's crosshatching motif in a variety of designs, colors, and formats. The Museum's version of Usuyuki, Japanese for "light snow," is among the largest and most complicated of the series, utilizing twelve screens to create subtle gradations of color and a collagelike, layered effect. The photo-screened newsprint, which Johns layered with inky blue and pastel-colored crosshatching, recalls earlier encaustic works like White Flag (1955), recently acquired by the Museum. Although the works are separated by medium and time (more than twenty-five years), both exemplify Johns's longstanding devotion to materials and the artistic process.