Untitled

This print belongs to a sequence of untitled works by Karen Pittman, an American mokuhanga practitioner whose selection for the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference Americas exhibition in Echizen placed her work alongside contemporary North American adopters of the Japanese water-based woodblock tradition. Leaving a print untitled is itself characteristic of much contemporary mokuhanga, where the image is presented as a formal object rather than a named narrative or subject — a departure from the historical [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) convention of titled series and named figures. As a mokuhanga, the print would have been produced by hand-rubbing [washi](/glossary/washi) paper across pigmented woodblocks with a [baren](/glossary/baren), with each color requiring a separate carved block and kentō registration marks to align successive impressions. The water-based pigments associated with the technique sit into the paper rather than on it, producing the matte, absorbed surface that distinguishes mokuhanga from oil-based relief printing. Pittman's appearance in the IMC juried selection situates this work within the international community that has formed around Japanese print pedagogy in residencies such as MI Lab and Nagasawa Art Park.