Untitled

This untitled woodblock print represents Karen Pittman's mokuhanga practice. Mokuhanga differs from Western relief printing in three principal ways: pigment is bound in water and rice paste rather than oil, paper is dampened before printing rather than printed dry, and pressure is applied by hand with a [baren](/glossary/baren) rather than by press. The combined effect is a print surface in which color is absorbed into the [washi](/glossary/washi) fiber and edges show characteristic softness from controlled water migration. Without an assigned subject title, the print is best read as a formal exploration within Pittman's larger studio output rather than as an image referring to an external subject — a positioning consistent with much contemporary mokuhanga, in which abstraction and non-narrative composition have become common. Her presence in the 2024 IMC Americas juried exhibition in Echizen, the historic washi-producing district of Fukui, places this work within an international contemporary scene that has expanded the medium beyond the genre categories of Edo-period [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) while preserving its material discipline.