IMC 2024 Echizen submission

Created for the International Mokuhanga Conference held in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture, in 2024, this print was contributed to the conference's print exchange portfolio — a tradition in which participating artists distribute editioned works printed on locally produced washi. Echizen has been a center of Japanese papermaking for over 1,500 years, and conference submissions typically employ kozo-fiber sheets sourced from regional ateliers. As a water-based woodblock, the work would have been printed using nori paste, mineral and vegetable pigments, and a baren rather than the oil-based inks of Garcia's screen-printing practice, with each color carried by a separately carved cherry or shina plywood block. The submission situates Garcia within an international network of contemporary mokuhanga practitioners extending the medium beyond its Edo-period associations. His broader practice — drawing on Marvel comics, manga, and cosmological imagery to explore queer identity — characteristically translates these contemporary visual languages through the slower, registration-dependent discipline of hand-pulled woodblock printing on washi.