Untitled

Sixteenth in the sequence of Fisher's untitled mokuhanga catalogued from his Toledo practice, this print continues his engagement with traditional Japanese water-based woodblock printing. The technique's tools and materials — [washi](/glossary/washi) paper, hand-carved cherry or shina blocks, water-based pigments, the [baren](/glossary/baren) — distinguish mokuhanga from oil-based Western relief printing in surface, color, and process. Fisher's geographical position, working from a Midwestern industrial city rather than New York or Tokyo, is itself representative of how contemporary mokuhanga has dispersed: the medium now sustains itself through a network of American studios and biennial gatherings that would have been unimaginable to Edo-period publishers and their commissioned carvers and printers. By leaving this and most of his catalogued works untitled, Fisher resists the topical and narrative framings that once organized Japanese printmaking into genres like [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) (bird-and-flower) or [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) (actor portraits), asking the viewer to engage with the print on its own terms.