IMC 2024 Echizen submission

Milford's submission to the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference exhibition in Echizen represents her work at a juried international gathering of contemporary mokuhanga practitioners. The IMC exhibitions consistently emphasize the medium's defining characteristics: water-based pigments rather than oil inks, hand-burnishing with a baren rather than press impression, and printing on absorbent washi sheets. Works submitted to IMC tend to demonstrate the registration precision (kento) and pigment layering that distinguish mokuhanga from Western relief printmaking. Echizen, in Fukui Prefecture, has produced washi for over 1,500 years and remains one of the principal sources of paper used by mokuhanga artists worldwide, making it a fitting venue for the Americas exhibition. Milford's selection places her within the contemporary North American mokuhanga community that has formed around the IMC, the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Kawaguchi-ko, and university printmaking programs that have integrated Japanese woodblock methods. Without published documentation of the specific image, the print is best understood as part of this exhibition record and the broader transmission of Edo-period technique into twenty-first-century studio practice.