
ann-kavanagh-at-mi-lab-studio.jpg
by Pat Griffin
- Image courtesy of
- Artist website (Pat Griffin)
Description
A portrait-format image of fellow Irish mokuhanga artist Ann Kavanagh at MI-LAB, the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory residency programme established in Japan to train international artists in traditional water-based woodblock technique. The image documents the workshop environment that has been central to the development of contemporary non-Japanese mokuhanga practice: residents work at low benches with carved blocks, brushes for applying water-based pigment, dampened [washi](/glossary/washi), and the [baren](/glossary/baren) used to transfer ink by hand pressure rather than press. The Craftspeople tag situates the work within Griffin's documentation of her peers and the studio culture that sustains mokuhanga outside Japan. MI-LAB residencies have been formative for many of the artists now exhibiting at the International Mokuhanga Conference, and the Irish community to which both Griffin and Kavanagh belong has grown substantially through these residencies. The piece reads as a record of practice and community as much as an autonomous print.






