Untitled

This untitled woodblock print emerged from Kenal's participation in the MI-LAB 2024 Basic Training Program A in Echizen, a residency that grounds international artists in traditional mokuhanga practice. Without an assigned title, the work sits within a body of study pieces produced as Kenal absorbed the foundational techniques taught at MI-LAB: cherry-block carving, kento registration, and water-based pigment application brushed onto the block rather than rolled. Echizen's centuries-old washi tradition supplies the absorbent kozo papers used in the program, and the baren — a bamboo-sheathed disc — transfers pigment through hand pressure rather than press. As an early residency print, the work likely demonstrates Kenal's first negotiations with the medium's particular logic: the way water content in the pigment determines depth of saturation, how the long fibres of washi receive a single impression, and how multiple blocks must align under the kento notches. The print belongs to a wave of contemporary mokuhanga produced by international residents whose practice carries Western painting and printmaking sensibilities into a Japanese craft framework.