Washi 250x

Washi 250x presents handmade Japanese paper fibers enlarged to 250 times their natural scale, making the microscopic structure of washi the pictorial subject of the mokuhanga itself. At 9.0 × 15.5 cm, the small format concentrates attention on a dense network of bast fibers — likely kozo, gampi, or mitsumata, the three plant sources traditionally used in Echizen washi production — rendered as overlapping linear forms across the sheet. The print operates as a conceptual inversion of the mokuhanga relationship to its support: washi, ordinarily the receiving substrate burnished by the baren during printing, is here the printed-from subject, turning the medium's attention back onto its own material foundation. Cutting magnified fiber networks into wood blocks demands careful registration and likely multiple blocks to convey overlap and translucency between fibers. The work was selected for the 5th International Mokuhanga Conference held in Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture, in 2024 — a venue specifically associated with washi production — situating Dean within a contemporary international mokuhanga community that interrogates the medium's traditional materials through reflexive, conceptual approaches rather than figurative subjects such as bijin-ga or meisho-e.