Untitled

Pittman's untitled print reflects a contemporary approach to mokuhanga in which the technique's material constraints — the grain of the cherry or shina block, the absorbency of [kozo](/glossary/kozo)-fiber [washi](/glossary/washi), the viscosity of nori-bound pigment — function as the primary compositional vocabulary. The choice to leave works untitled is common among North American mokuhanga practitioners who have come to the technique through fine art rather than commercial illustration backgrounds, and who treat the print as a discrete object rather than as part of a narrative series. Each impression in mokuhanga carries small variations from the hand-burnishing process, and titled or not, the work documents a specific moment of contact between block, paper, and [baren](/glossary/baren). Pittman's participation in the 2024 IMC Americas exhibition in Echizen — held in a town that has produced washi for over fifteen hundred years — places this print within a context that explicitly connects contemporary international practice to the medium's material origins.