Untitled

This untitled print continues Fisher's catalogued sequence of mokuhanga produced in Toledo. The water-based woodblock process he uses descends directly from Edo-period commercial printmaking but, in its contemporary form, has been adapted by artists across North America to serve abstract, gestural, and conceptual ends. The defining materials — shina or cherry blocks, [sumi](/glossary/sumi) or watercolor pigments, dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) paper, the [baren](/glossary/baren) — remain constant, while the visual vocabulary expands. Fisher's run of untitled works invites attention to the printed surface itself: the way pigment seats into the paper rather than sitting on top of it, the registration marks faintly visible at the margins, the texture of the woodgrain transferred from block to paper. In this respect his practice converges with that of other contemporary American mokuhanga artists who treat the technique as a contemporary studio medium rather than a costume of Japanese tradition.