IMC 2024 Echizen submission

This print was Conrad's contribution to the Americas regional exhibition at the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference held in Echizen, Japan, a gathering organized by the International Mokuhanga Association every three years. As an IMC submission, the work would have been printed using the water-based mokuhanga method: pigment mixed with rice paste and brushed onto hand-carved cherry or shina blocks, then transferred to [washi](/glossary/washi) by hand pressure with a [baren](/glossary/baren) rather than a press. Echizen, the host region, has been a center of Japanese papermaking for over 1,500 years, and conference submissions frequently engage with the qualities of locally produced [kozo](/glossary/kozo) washi — its absorbency, its tooth, its capacity to hold layered [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations and flat fields of saturated color. Conrad's participation places him within the contemporary international cohort of practitioners who have adopted mokuhanga outside Japan, working alongside artists from across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The IMC exhibitions function less as a single stylistic movement than as a survey of how the technique has been adapted to non-traditional subjects and visual languages by artists trained both in Japan and abroad.