Untitled work by Karen Pittman

A sixth untitled print, this work continues Pittman's series of mokuhanga investigations. The baren — traditionally a coil of twisted bamboo cord encased in a bamboo sheath — produces subtle pressure variations across the printed surface that distinguish hand-pulled prints from press-printed ones. Skilled printers use the baren to vary impression density within a single pull, deepening some areas and lightening others. This hand-controlled pressure, combined with the absorptive properties of kozo-fiber washi, gives mokuhanga prints their characteristic depth and quietness of surface. Pittman's appearance in the IMC Americas exhibition in Echizen — held in a region that has produced washi for over fifteen hundred years — places her work within a network of contemporary printmakers actively in dialogue with the materials and methods of the Japanese tradition while pursuing their own subjects and formal concerns.