IMC 2024 Echizen submission

The International Mokuhanga Conference (IMC) 2024 was held in Echizen, a Fukui Prefecture region with a long history of [washi](/glossary/washi) production. This print was Shimizu's submission to the conference's juried exhibition. As an IMC participant since the conference's founding in 2011, Shimizu belongs to the international mokuhanga network that has drawn non-Japanese practitioners back into dialogue with the technique's traditional centers. IMC submissions are hand-printed in the standard mokuhanga method—water-based pigments applied to washi with a [baren](/glossary/baren) in successive impressions from separately carved blocks—and Shimizu's works typically use a restrained palette of earth tones and a landscape or nature subject. Echizen's identity as a paper-making region gives added resonance to a print made for exhibition there: the substrate itself participates in the work's meaning. Her training under Tomikichiro Tokuriki and Yoshisuke Funasaka in the 1970s places her within a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) lineage, and her IMC contributions extend that lineage into the contemporary international community.