Untitled

This untitled mokuhanga is one of a sequence of woodblock prints by Karen Pittman, an American practitioner of the Japanese water-based printing technique whose selection for the 2024 IMC Americas exhibition placed her work in the Echizen survey of current mokuhanga practice. The medium itself imposes specific possibilities and limits: water-based pigments mixed with rice paste produce matte, paper-absorbed color rather than the surface ink film of oil-based relief printing; carving is done with chisels and U- or V-gouges into long-grained blocks of cherry, shina, or basswood; registration is mechanical rather than optical, achieved by aligning each sheet against L-shaped and straight kentō marks cut into the block. Within these constraints contemporary practitioners explore a wide range of imagery, from representational landscape to abstraction, and the untitled designation reflects the field's general comfort with presenting prints as formal objects rather than named subjects. Pittman's work sits within the cohort of North American mokuhanga artists whose practice the IMC was founded to connect.