Untitled work by Michiko Van de Velde

This untitled woodblock print belongs to Van de Velde's ongoing investigation of sunlight as a transient subject — the recording of an apparition of light before its particular nuance disappears. Worked in the mokuhanga manner on Japanese paper, the print would have been produced from hand-carved blocks inked with water-based pigments and impressed by baren rather than press, a process that favors soft tonal passages, bokashi gradations, and the visible grain of the absorbent washi support. Untitled works in her output tend to function as direct, almost diaristic notations of an observed light condition, stripped of narrative anchor so that the image registers as atmosphere rather than scene. The piece sits alongside her painting, ceramics, etchings, and site-specific work as part of a single sustained inquiry conducted across media, in which the woodblock print serves as a means of fixing fugitive optical phenomena into the slow, deliberate physical record that the mokuhanga process makes possible.