Untitled work by Lari Gibbons

This third untitled woodblock situates Gibbons within the contemporary printmaking field, where the relief medium has been extended through digital fabrication. Gibbons's documented use of CNC routing and laser cutting suggests that some of her woodblock matrices may be prepared by machine, producing line qualities and registrations distinct from those achievable by hand with knife and gouge or impressed by baren. The resulting prints occupy a space between traditional relief and post-digital practice, a position consistent with her teaching in photopolymers and digital-analog hybrid methods. Compared to the nineteenth-century Japanese tradition that informs much of the broader Hanga reference—oban-format meisho-e, kacho-e, and bijin-ga produced through divided labor among carver, printer, and publisher—contemporary American woodblock prints typically use fewer color passes, single-artist production, and a wider range of papers. Within her body of work, which also includes intaglio, letterpress, and monotype, the woodblock print serves as one node in an ongoing investigation of how matrices, pressure, and paper produce image, an inquiry shaped by her training under Karen Kunc.