Untitled

A sixth untitled mokuhanga print by Pittman. The water-based woodblock process imposes specific constraints that shape the appearance of the finished work: pigments must be reapplied to the block for each impression, the paper must be kept evenly dampened across the printing session, and the carving must accommodate registration with the [kento](/glossary/kento) marks across however many blocks the design requires. These constraints, rather than limiting expression, have become the formal vocabulary of contemporary mokuhanga, where practitioners often foreground the layered, slightly imprecise registration and the absorbed pigment surface as evidence of the hand-printed origin. Pittman's selection for the 2024 IMC Americas exhibition in Echizen — held in the prefecture whose [washi](/glossary/washi)-making industry supplies much of the paper used internationally for mokuhanga — situates her within a community that takes the material specificity of the medium as a starting point.