Biography
Kathleen Hargrave is a contemporary American printmaker and glass artist whose practice combines Japanese mokuhanga with etching, collagraph, and blown and kiln-formed glass, and whose career has been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest print and glass-art community. Birth and death dates have not been published, but her biography records that she was born in California and currently lives east of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest, with her studio practice principally based in Redmond, Washington. Her formal training began with a B.A. in Fine Art and Art Education from the University of Oregon (1975), followed by post-graduate printmaking studies at the University of Washington School of Art across 1984–87, and multiple session enrollments at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington — the influential glass-art residency school co-founded by Dale Chihuly in 1971 — where she studied under several of the principal figures in American studio glass. Her engagement with mokuhanga developed within the context of the Walla Walla–centred Pacific Northwest revival programme and was formalized through her participation in the Fifth International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC2024) in Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, where her work was included in the juried international exhibition held at the Imadate Art Center. She has held a 2024 residency at the Mokuhanga Project Space in Walla Walla, the non-profit residency programme run in partnership with Whitman College that has functioned since the late 2010s as the principal contemporary mokuhanga teaching environment in the interior United States, and a parallel 2024 residency at Constellation Studio in Lincoln, Nebraska, which extends her practice into a Midwest network of contemporary printmaking studios. She was named recipient of the Mary and Gary Molyneaux Scholarship (2024–25) by Seattle Print Arts, the regional print organization, and her exhibition record includes the 2024 Juried International Mokuhanga Exhibition at the Imadate Art Center in Japan, the 2023 Art Squared exhibition in Walla Walla, and earlier museum exhibitions at the Bellevue Arts Museum in 1988 and 1991. She is a member of Seattle Print Arts, the Los Angeles Printmakers Society, the Glass Art Society, the American Craft Council, and the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA). The thematic register of her recent work is what she describes as forest bathing — drawn from the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, the contemplative immersion in forest environments codified as a public-health concept in Japan in the 1980s — and the prints in this strand pursue layered, gestural, brush-driven mokuhanga surfaces that read as an aerial or canopy register of forest space, frequently combined with etching plates in the same composition. Notable individual prints include Resilience (11 x 14 in., mokuhanga), Near the Gap (12 x 16 in., etching and mokuhanga), and Orbits and Velocity (16.5 x 21 in., mokuhanga). Her glass work is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and her recent printmaking work continues to enter regional and institutional collections through the Seattle Print Arts and Mokuhanga Project Space exhibition programmes.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Works Indexed
- 3
Frequently Asked Questions
Kathleen Hargrave is a contemporary American printmaker and glass artist whose practice combines Japanese mokuhanga with etching, collagraph, and blown and kiln-formed glass, and whose career has been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest print and glass-art community. Birth and death dates have not been published, but her biography records that she was born in California and currently lives east of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest, with her studio practice principally based in Redmond, Washington. Her formal training began with a B.A. in Fine Art and Art Education from the University of Oregon (1975), followed by post-graduate printmaking studies at the University of Washington School of Art across 1984–87, and multiple session enrollments at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington — the influential glass-art residency school co-founded by Dale Chihuly in 1971 — where she studied under several of the principal figures in American studio glass. Her engagement with mokuhanga developed within the context of the Walla Walla–centred Pacific Northwest revival programme and was formalized through her participation in the Fifth International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC2024) in Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, where her work was included in the juried international exhibition held at the Imadate Art Center. She has held a 2024 residency at the Mokuhanga Project Space in Walla Walla, the non-profit residency programme run in partnership with Whitman College that has functioned since the late 2010s as the principal contemporary mokuhanga teaching environment in the interior United States, and a parallel 2024 residency at Constellation Studio in Lincoln, Nebraska, which extends her practice into a Midwest network of contemporary printmaking studios. She was named recipient of the Mary and Gary Molyneaux Scholarship (2024–25) by Seattle Print Arts, the regional print organization, and her exhibition record includes the 2024 Juried International Mokuhanga Exhibition at the Imadate Art Center in Japan, the 2023 Art Squared exhibition in Walla Walla, and earlier museum exhibitions at the Bellevue Arts Museum in 1988 and 1991. She is a member of Seattle Print Arts, the Los Angeles Printmakers Society, the Glass Art Society, the American Craft Council, and the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA). The thematic register of her recent work is what she describes as forest bathing — drawn from the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku, the contemplative immersion in forest environments codified as a public-health concept in Japan in the 1980s — and the prints in this strand pursue layered, gestural, brush-driven mokuhanga surfaces that read as an aerial or canopy register of forest space, frequently combined with etching plates in the same composition. Notable individual prints include Resilience (11 x 14 in., mokuhanga), Near the Gap (12 x 16 in., etching and mokuhanga), and Orbits and Velocity (16.5 x 21 in., mokuhanga). Her glass work is held in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and her recent printmaking work continues to enter regional and institutional collections through the Seattle Print Arts and Mokuhanga Project Space exhibition programmes.
Kathleen Hargrave's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Kathleen Hargrave is a contemporary printmaker working in the mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock) tradition. Their work contributes to the living tradition of Japanese woodblock printing. Prices for contemporary mokuhanga prints range from $100 for smaller works to $1,500 for major compositions. Most prints sell in the $180–$600 range. The global mokuhanga community has been growing, with increasing exhibition opportunities and collector interest. Contemporary mokuhanga represents an affordable entry point for collectors.
