Diary: July 18 '08, in Israel

Made during a trip to Israel in July 2008, this woodcut and silkscreen print records a summer day in the Middle East. Noda traveled widely, and his international Diary entries create a striking contrast with the Japanese domestic scenes that form the series' backbone. An Israeli July means intense dry heat, bleached stone architecture, olive groves, and Mediterranean light — conditions far removed from the humid summers of his home country. The woodcut-silkscreen technique translates this foreign landscape through a process rooted in Japanese printmaking, producing a cultural hybrid: Middle Eastern subject matter rendered through East Asian craft.