10 Years of Printmaking
2026 marks a major milestone for me as an artist and marks 10 years of making Japanese woodblock prints. While I studied oil painting in college, my first introduction to fine art printmaking was when I was working in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Mezzanine Gallery, a long standing fine print sales gallery located inside the Museum. Through selling prints, I became fascinated with the materials and varied processes that go into printmaking. This connected me back to my love of Japanese Art and to April Vollmer’s book Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop.
Looking back on my first print, I never thought that I would be doing this 10 years later, but printmaking continues to be an integral part of my artistic practice. The continues to be engaging, and I find myself constantly learning, being challenged and growing through each project I take on. My natural inclination is to try and control the medium, but mokuhanga requires a different touch, a balance between the materials and hand, with outcome not being purely from the artist’s will, but from a collaboration between wood, water, and paper. It has taught me to be more patient, less critical and more adaptable. It has taught me to enjoy uncertainty, relinquishing control and reacting to the natural ebbs and flows of medium.
After 10 years, I doubt I will ever be tired of mokuhanga, and look forward to what the next 10 years brings.
My first print- made in 2016
In other news, 2026 has been busy since my last post. I have completed two new prints and am preparing for the Spring.
The first print, just completed is was based on my 2024 visit to Japan, taking the bullet train south along the Japanese Alps back to Tokyo. Titled “Hida,” it was made from two reduced woodblock prints with 14 color layers on a handmade Kizuki washi.
“That old road we traveled,
Once by foot and by cart,
Now by high speed train,
Hovering over the ground.
As I look back on those hills
Those same unchanged forms,
Do they look down on us,
And wonder,
Why do we hurry so?”
“Hida”, 2026
My 2nd print of the year was finished back in January, based on one dark winter night, walking home from work. A little more experimental, I wanted to play with a multi-colored gradation and see how overlays of sumi-ink would retain some of the base colors beneath.
“Cold Moon”, 2026
A reduction mokuhanga on Tosa Hanga washi, “Cold Moon” was a fun experiment in texture and color.
“A umbra passes over,
A flickering light,
Casting long shadows on the icy ground
A halo through passing clouds
I shiver, that beacon bright
Calling me forth,
To walk again beneath that cold moon.”
As the year presses on, I am looking forward to upcoming opportunities with the warmer weather. My print “Lover’s Eye” was selected for the show “Focus on the Flat Files: The Earth is Our Body” in conjunction with Robert Lucy’s solo exhibition Paradise, at Kentler International Drawing Space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I will also be co-instructing a mokuhanga workshop at Kentler in April, so worth keeping an eye out for more details on that in the coming months.
There will also be a selection of my work on display at Cura Contemporary in Morgan Hill, California in a upcoming group show of artist formerly shown in their sister space, Colibri Gallery, which closed in December.
As always, thank you to everyone who continues to be part of the printmaking community. As the world around us feels more and more uncertain, I find myself finding solace and hope in art making.
