Untitled work by Karen Pittman

The final print in Pittman's untitled sequence rounds out a body of work that demonstrates her sustained engagement with mokuhanga. The International Mokuhanga Conference, held triennially with a partner exhibition in Echizen, brings together practitioners, scholars, and the suppliers who maintain the material tradition: papermakers producing washi from kozo, gampi, and mitsumata fibers; toolmakers producing baren and the specialized knives (hangi-tō) used to carve cherry-wood blocks. Selection for the IMC Americas exhibition is therefore not only aesthetic recognition but a placement within a working community of makers. Pittman, exhibiting at the 2024 conference, joined a roster of contemporary North American mokuhanga artists whose work extends the range of subjects addressed in the medium — figurative, abstract, landscape, conceptual — while remaining grounded in its specific technical demands. Her untitled prints invite close attention to the surface qualities those demands produce.