mokuhanga show review

There’s a wonderful article in the Seven Days online arts magazine about our Mokuhanga Sisters show at the Southern Vermont Arts Centre. Thank you to Pamela Polston for the thoughtful review!

These are some of my floral prints in the show…

…and these are a few of Gotou san’s amazing abstract works.

This print of his has such a beautifully rich black along the top, and an incredible gold metallic shimmer that needs to be seen in person to appreciate.

The exhibition continues until March 27, I hope you get a chance to visit!

mokuhanga show in Vermont

The World Between the Block and the Paper is currently showing at the Southern Vermont Art Centre in Manchester, Vermont, USA. It was organised by Patty Hudak, a member of our printmaking collective Mokuhanga Sisters.

Photo by Yoonmi Nam

The show features work by the Mokuhanga Sisters, plus a guest artist we each invited, either a teacher or a student, and also a few local artists connected with us.

photo by Dave Barnum Photography

I invited my teacher Hidehiko Gotou san to show his prints alongside my own. His are the blue and gold ones shown here. They sold out on the opening day of the exhibition!

photo by Dave Barnum Photography

The exhibition is also a chance for us to showcase our collaborative project Borderless, co-ordinated by Lucy May Schofield. Borderless is an emakimono, a scroll, made up of prints by each of us.

photo by Dave Barnum Photography

The eight prints are black and white, mostly printed with sumi ink, and constructed by hand by Lucy. My print Night Garden is shown here at the beginning of the scroll.

photo by Dave Barnum Photography

Our Wood + Paper + Box collaborative project (with Yoonmi Nam and Katie Baldwin) is also on show, with the flat pieces of our boxed work under glass, and the 3-dimensional pieces on plinths around the room. My double-sided uchiwa fan is shown in the first photo above.

photos by Dave Barnum Photography

I’m especially happy that this quadtych of tree prints is being shown here - I made them on an artists residency in Vermont years ago, and they are finally being exhibited for the first time, in Vermont!

photo by Dave Barnum Photography

The show is up until the 27th of March. More information is available here. Hope you can go and see it!

my solo show in Tokyo

I had a solo show! In Tokyo! The one that was cancelled in Spring of 2020 due to the pandemic. I rethought the show, and turned it into a sort of goodbye event, as we were leaving Japan soon afterwards.

The show was held in the adorable Almost Perfect gallery, in the downtown (rapidly becoming hipster) part of Tokyo.

left photo by Lee Basford

The space was perfectly suited to the scale and tone of my work, and I was so happy to show there. The sunlight slanted in in the morning, and the gallery was bright and airy for the rest of the day.

Most of the framed prints were mokuhanga, but there were a few etchings too. I framed a few of the pieces specially for the show, and also experimented with mounting some of them directly onto wood, instead of framing behind glass.

As well as framed prints, I showed a selection of other printed products, such as artists books, handmade sketchbooks, greetings cards and postcards.

I also showed some of my ceramics - the HK willow and HK toile collections, and even a few London toile teacups.

right photo by Lee Basford

I was so happy that people came to see the show to say hello/goodbye. Happier still when everyone bought something to take home with them.

A special thank you to Luis and Yuka for hosting my show, and to everyone who supported me, by showing up, by buying something, and for saying nice things about my work. Thank you.

Sumi-Fusion Mokuhanga exhibition

I’ve just spent the last week in Nara, Japan, attending the 4th International Mokuhanga Conference. There were talks, practical demos, visits, and a wonderful juried exhibition of mokuhanga prints from around the world.

My newest print ‘Summer Blooms’ was selected, and it was great to see it hung amongst so many wonderful pieces.

Our Mokuhanga Sisters collaborative scroll ‘Borderless’ was also on display. Here’s a picture showing both my pieces.

It was truly a gift to be able to attend the conference in person, and I’m sad that no-one from outside Japan could travel in, but the online conference made up for it a little. Hopefully the next one will be in person!

I also participated in the online Open Portfolio, which can be seen here. Hope you enjoy looking at everyone’s amazing work!

Kyoto show

Yesterday I helped install our mokuhanga group show in hip bookstore/gallery Keibunsha in Kyoto.

It’s a group of five printmakers, and the work is eclectic, and I think it looks pretty good together!

I’m showing mokuhanga prints I made in the last couple of years, plus some greetings cards and postcards that feature my mokuhanga work.

Some mini cards carved and printed by Kitamura san’s apprentice carvers are also on display and available to purchase. Mine is the tiny blue teapot, I love it! I’ve never seen my work interpreted by someone else, so this was a great project to be involved with.

The show is up for a week, and I’ll be there on monday the 6th December for a few hours before taking the show down. Hope to see you there!

art auction 2

I’m extremely happy to say that my newest mokuhanga print, Pink Anemone, raised US$210 towards women’s rights charities in the US through @stillwerise.

We need to help each other, however we can! Thanks, as always, for your wonderful support, Mariko x

Edition Basel residency

I’ve just completed a virtual artists residency with Edition Basel in Switzerland. I was in California, and worked on mokuhanga prints, and then we all got together on zoom every evening from all over the world and discussed what we’d been doing.

We collectively chose the theme of ‘Übergang’ for our residency, a German word meaning transition/change/boundary. I made a series of prints of the view from the balcony, looking at the dusk/sunset/twilight skies. And then made them into accordian-fold artists books, that show a different view depending on which angle you view them from.

This weekend a show is being held at the Basler Papiermuhle in Basel, with everyone’s work, either in person, or on screens for those of us participating from abroad. I managed to send in some of my flat prints, but also showed the finished folded pieces on a screen.

It was lovely to meet so many new printmakers, and take part in some lively conversations over the course of the week.

These are some of the experimental prints I made, using 4 blocks and a variety of colours…

I haven’t really tried to use the whole paper like this for a very long time, and I had fun inking up the blocks in random painterly ways, and not worrying about making exact editions!

I set up a low table for the residency and spent the whole week here, carving, designing, printing, cutting and glueing…

I spent the first day of the residency seeing if I could design, carve and print all in one day - turns out I can! I made this small series of bird prints, that can be viewed from any way up.

One day I hope I’ll be able to visit Basel and the amazing Druckwerk printstudio in person…

Tokyo Summer exhibition

I showed three new mokuhanga prints in the Summer Mokuhanga Fair organised by MI-LAB in 3331 Arts Chiyoda, Tokyo last weekend. I wish I could’ve attended!

Everyone who exhibited was invited to try some new washi papers from Ozu Washi, and one of Holbein paints new seasonal paint palettes. I really enjoyed this part if it, trying materials that were new to me.

I’m hoping to make many new works with these materials and continue exploring the theme of gardens, flowers, and how we see them.

new mokuhanga print 2

It’s finished! Here’s my newest print summer blooms all framed up, ready for the Summer Colour Exhibition at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo in 2 weeks.

It’s a 4 block print, with a variety of layering and bokashi techniques. I wanted to create more realistic looking flowers than my usual, but still with my feature flatness. I love how the stems came out!

Here’s my printing set-up with sketches to work from, and a detail of one of the buds. Hope you can pop in to the show to take a look!

new mokuhanga print

I’m working on a new mokuhanga print of flowers. I bought some ranunculus blooms and sketched them in a variety of positions, and worked out a design that’s slightly more realistic than my usual work. I’m trying something a little different for this one! I then transferred my sketch to a largish piece of wood and started carving…

I can’t wait to test out some lovely colours for printing!

mokuhanga baren pin

My printmaking collective wood+paper+box commissioned a jeweller to create some beautiful bronze lapel pins for us to sell. The money raised will go towards funding our future projects.

The pins are hand-made by Kansas-based jeweler Sunyoung Cheong. They are adorable 3-dimensional miniature replicas of mokuhanga barens. Each pin is 17mm in diameter (approximately the size of a dime) and we packaged them in kraft paper boxes, with our new “I love mokuhanga” stamps.

We had 15 pins for our soft launch this week, which sold out almost immediately!

DM @woodpaperbox on instagram if you’d like to be added to the waitlist for our official launch later in the summer. They are the perfect accessory for all woodblock printing geeks. I wear mine with pride!

wood + paper + box live

Katie Baldwin, Yoonmi Nam and I spoke about our collaborative project wood + paper + box in an online live conversation hosted by The Print Center in Philadelphia this week.

It was so amazing to look at the beginnings of our work right from the moment we all met in Nagasawa in 2004. You can watch the whole conversation here.

We showed each box we’ve made, plus edited videos (all available to see on our wood + paper + box website) and took turns talking about all the elements of our work, exhibitions and future plans.

I even managed a quick sketch during the Q & A…

We’ve already started talking about box 5!

golden week printmaking

It’s been golden week in Tokyo, and I made use of the holiday to do some mokuhanga printmaking.

I reprinted my poppy print in blacks, in a tiny edition…

…and my bird vase print in a darker blue. I’m hoping to enter them into some competitions. Fingers crossed!

spring pop-up shop

This weekend I’m taking part in the online pop-up shop organised by Art Byte Critique , my art group in Tokyo. I’ve added some older (and precious) prints into my shop for this weekend only, and am also offering a discount on all sales through sunday.

There are so many wonderful artists in our group, please do take a look:

Happy art shopping! Thanks for your support.

mokuhanga exhibition

Monday to Friday this week I have some prints on show in the CfSHE gallery in Tokyo. It's an exhibition of prints from all the artists who attended the mokuhanga residency in Kawaguchiko this summer.Let me know know if you'd like to meet up there! Date: From 15 to 19 January 2018 Venue: CfSHE Gallery B109, 6-11-14, Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, 1010021 Tokyo Hour: 13.00/17.00 Admission Free

2017年 MI-LAB アドバンス・プログラム参加アーティスト Artists who participated in 2017 MI-LAB Advanced Program

Kathleen(Kaite) Baldwin ケイティ・ボールドウィン (USA) Kate MacDonagh ケイト・マクドナー (Ireland) Mariko Jesse マリコ・ジェシー (UK) Melissa Schulenberg メリッサ・シューレンバーグ　(USA) Natasha Norman ナターシャ・ノーマン (South Africa) Patty Hudak パティ・フダック (USA) An Gee Chan アン・ジー・チャン (Hong Kong) Brenda Petays ブレンダ・ぺテイス (Canada) Fuko Ito フウコ・イトウ (Japan) Jon Lee ジョン・リー (USA) Sarah Hulsey サラ・ハルシー (USA)

You can see more information here.

Hawaii conference

In September, after a short holiday on the Big Island, I went to Oahu with my friends Katie Baldwin and Yoonmi Nam, to attend the 3rd International Mokuhanga Conference at Honolulu University. We installed Into the Fold, an exhibition of our newest collaborative mokuhanga project. It was an extension of our current project (un)fold: we invited three printmakers, Sarah Hulsey, Fuko Ito and Mia O, to collaborate with us, exploring the ideas and acts of folding and unfolding, and the lineage of learning the mokuhanga technique. We also gave a presentation about the project during the conference.Here's a close-up of my piece Into the Garden. It represents an abstract garden, is printed so that it can be viewed from either side of the paper, and has a printed enclosure. It's lovely when it sways slightly in the breeze, and the plants seem to be alive.My Meyer Lemon Curd Recipe was also shown in the juried international group exhibition: Beauty of Mokuhanga: Discipline & Sensibility 木版画の美：修練と感性 I did quite a few sketches in the presentations I attended, and also at the conference opening and closings, of the speakers and committee members...I had never participated in the open portfolio at the previous conferences so I thought I would give it a go this time. I showed a selection of my mokuhanga prints and artists books, and spoke to anyone who was interested...Here you can see my blue Into the Garden piece in an alternative configuration.Katie, Yoonmi and I also showed our previous wood+paper+box print collaborations on a separate table, and everyone was encouraged to open and handle each of our individual prints in the boxes.It was a thoroughly enjoyable conference, where it was great to meet up with old and new friends and colleagues. It encouraged me to spend more time on my printmaking practice and I can't wait to start more prints.

Here's a little sketch I did from the window of our manoa airbnb, of the misty rainy mountains. I loved the area where we stayed; there were more rainbows there than I'd seen in a very long time.

open studios

It's that time again! I'm showing lots of prints, both old and brand new, in my San Francisco Dogpatch workshop. Please come and visit us and buy art direct from the artists.Here's a sneak peak of some of my framed prints up on the wall...

Labour Day sale

Here in the US it's labo(u)r day on monday, so I've put all my prints on sale for 4 days, from today. Hurrah! Please visit my shop here to take a look...

mokuhanga prints in my shop

I've just put some of my new mokuhanga prints in my online shop. I printed these while I was in Japan and have just completed signing and preparing them. There are two versions of this little imaginary trumpet flower, one in blues and one in red and green...And there are blue and pink peonies too.Hope you'll pop by my shop and consider a purchase for yourself or as a gift!

mokuhanga print

I completed one large-ish print while I was on the mokuhanga residency in Japan: one that features plants in a garden. I was inspired by the abundant greenery all around the house, and in the surrounding gardens.I did some initial pencil sketches and arranged them in a wide landscape.Then did a painted version to work out solid areas of colour.I then started carving a long block of shina wood. And then carved, and carved some more...When the block was fully carved, I set up, ready to print.It's the largest mokuhanga print I've ever made, and was extremely challenging. But I learnt alot, and really pushed myself. I had only meant to do a pink and green version, but felt that blues might work too. I'm now fond of them both!I intend to take the print further, and create an artists book out of it. It'll be shown in Hawaii in a few month's time, and I'll blog again when it's all done...