Untitled

A mokuhanga by Karen Pittman, exhibited untitled. The 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference Americas exhibition in Echizen, for which Pittman's work was selected, was organized to present contemporary water-based woodblock practice in the Americas to an audience in the Japanese papermaking region with which mokuhanga's material tradition is closely linked. Echizen [washi](/glossary/washi), produced in Fukui Prefecture for over a millennium, remains a preferred paper for many mokuhanga printers, and the conference's siting there reflects the medium's continuing dependence on artisanal Japanese supplies even as its practitioners have spread internationally. Producing a mokuhanga involves carving each color onto its own block from a long-grained wood such as cherry or shina, mixing pigment with rice paste on the block surface with a brush, dampening the washi to receive the pigment, and rubbing the paper with a [baren](/glossary/baren) to transfer the impression. The untitled status of this work positions it within the contemporary studio practice that the IMC exhibition was organized to represent.