Star Festival (Hoshi Matsuri)

"Star Festival" (七夕, Tanabata, also read hoshi matsuri) takes its subject from the July 7 festival commemorating the once-yearly meeting of the celestial weaver-princess Orihime and the cowherd Hikoboshi — the stars Vega and Altair, separated across the Milky Way. The festival's visual conventions include bamboo branches hung with tanzaku, small paper strips bearing handwritten wishes, as well as the river of stars itself. Ikuta's 2021 mezzotint translates these inherently luminous motifs into his deep-ground intaglio vocabulary, where every point of light must be recovered from a fully rocked plate through patient burnishing rather than added with ink. The print belongs to his sustained late-career engagement with festival and seasonal subjects, joining "Starry Night" (2019) as part of an extended treatment of the night sky, and continuing the integration of traditional Japanese subject matter into the Western mezzotint medium that has defined his practice.