Yesternow

The coined title fuses yesterday and now, signaling a temporal collapse that recurs across Stewart's Kyoto subjects, where Edo-era architecture, Meiji storefronts, and contemporary life occupy the same streets. As a mokuhanga work, the print is built up from successive impressions of carved cherry-wood blocks, each registered by [kento](/glossary/kento) marks cut into the corners, with water-based pigment driven into the [washi](/glossary/washi) by a [baren](/glossary/baren). The medium itself reinforces the title's argument: mokuhanga is a centuries-old technique still actively practiced, the past held in present hands. Stewart's training in watercolor and etching tends to produce mokuhanga prints with carefully modulated tonal ranges rather than flat color fields, and [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients are likely used to register subtle shifts in light. The work was exhibited at Hangaten, the long-running Kyoto print show that has been a primary venue for Stewart's mokuhanga output and a point of contact between Japanese and foreign printmakers working in the medium.