printmaking – silver minnow

Print Exchange

Hydrangea – water-based woodblock print (mokuhanga)

I am participating in a print exchange at the Remarque Print Workshop in Albuquerque New Mexico. Each participant has created an edition of 11 prints on 8 x 10 paper. In return, each will receive 10 randomly selected prints from other participants sometime this month. I can’t wait to see these prints! This is a great way to share work and to collect the work of other artists, as well as supporting an arts organization or cause.

I created the above print, “Hydrangea,” for the exchange. The image size is 7 x 8.5″. (Mokuhanga -Japanese water-based woodblock- 5 colors, 10 impressions, Bamboo Select 170 gsm paper from Awagami Paper Factory)

The print show is now open online, and features 80 printmakers employing a wide variety methods and media. Each print is available for sale at $75. Half of all proceeds will go to the gallery’s education fund. You can read more about the gallery, see the prints, and buy one here:

https://www.remarqueprintshop.com/print-exchange-2021.html

Japan MI-Lab Artist Residency

I am following a new path in my work: woodblock printmaking using the Japanese technique known as moku hanga. My experience with Katazome — its simple materials, tools, and its familiar rhythms of preparation and repetition has naturally led me to to explore this new direction.

One year ago I was in Fuji-Kawaguchiko, Japan participating in a five week long artist residency at the Mokuhanga Innovation Lab (MI-Lab). Each session invites, through a juried application process, six artists from around the world to learn Japanese woodblock printmaking from master printmakers. This was a transformative experience for me and I am so grateful to have participated!

Memories that linger: the beautiful and quiet town of Katsuyama near Mount Fuji and Lake Kawaguchiko; the awe-inspiring presence of the mountain (“Fuji-San”); the rhythms and tasks of the studio and daily life with this small group of diverse artists.

Our Sensei, Chihiro Taki , and two visiting Sensei (Ayao Shiokawa and Michiko Hamada) shared their expertise and demonstrated many intriguing possibilities for a contemporary approach to this ancient art form. I know that my work will continue to be transformed by this learning.

During this year I made three prints (images below), which are now available in my online shop.

“Approaching Winter”
“Memory of Spring”
“Autumn Tranquility”

Learning Japanese Woodblock Printmaking

Two weeks ago I attended a Japanese Woodblock intensive at Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis taught by master printer Keiji Shinohara. The week-long intensive was so satisfying–taught by a wonderful artist and encouraging instructor, with just enough time enough to design, carve and print an image.

Some of the unique features of this method of printmaking as compared with Western techniques is that it uses water-based pigments rather than oil-based, a baren (flat, hand-held disc) rather than a press, and that each block of a multiple color print contains the registration marks within it. In developing ideas for a pictorial work, for example, using katazome, it can be frustrating to design and make a layered image, that is, one with more than one stencil. You don’t know are getting you have until you wash the paste off. This is fine when a design for an image or a repeated pattern requires only one stencil, but frustrating for me when I want to layer images and align or register components on top of one another, and then create multiple instances of the image, like prints.