Episode Details

April Vollmer is one of the most important mokuhanga printmakers and authors working today. Her book, Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop, is a must have for any person interested in mokuhanga. its process, history, and the artists making it.

On this epsiode of The Unfinished Print, I speak with April Vollmer about her travels throughout the mokuhanga landscape. Her time at Nagasawa Art Park, and then onto MI Lab. How she got into becoming an author, writing Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop, her influences and her process.

Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own mokuhanga work on Instagram @andrezadoroznyprints Twitter @unfinishedprint, or email me at theunfinishedprint@gmail.com

Artists works follow after the note about them.

Notes: may contain a hyperlink. Simply click on the highlighted word or phrase.

April Vollmer -website, Instagram, Facebook. April was recently a part of the mokuhanga exhibition at the Kentler International Drawing Space, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York. This show was curated by the Mokuhanga Sisters collective and is called Between Worlds from, June 17 - July 31st, 2022.

Rochester, New York - is a city located in Upstate New York. It was originally inhabited by the Seneca peoples. Shaped by the Genesee River, Rochester was once a flour making city as well as a city famous for its horticulture. More information can be found, here.

Hunter College - Is a public college located in Manhattan, New York, and was founded in 1870 as a college for women. More info, here.

abstract art - is an art type which moved away from a 19th Century artistic idea of perspective. Abstract art was a rebellion of colour, shape, and experience, for both the viewer and the maker. It corresponds to the modernism of the industrial world, with science, technology, and architecture. More info can be found, here.

colour field - is a term in painting associated with the abstract painters of the 1950's and 1960's using large swaths of flat colour. Mark Rothko (1903-1970) is one such painter associated with colour field. More info, here.

Vincent Longo (1923-2017) - was a painter, printmaker and teacher based in New York City. He was a part of the New York School of artist's of the 1950's and 1960's. His work was based in geometry. You can find more information about Vinnie, here.

4 Blocks (1985)

Bill Paden (1930-2004) - was a woodblock printmaker and artist who studied under the American expat Clifton Karhu (1927-2007) in Kyoto. More info, here.

Beppu Beach Water Bay Mountain (ca. 1970's)

hanmoto system - is the Edo Period (1603-1868) collaboration system of making woodblock prints in Japan. The system was about using, carvers, printers, and craftsmen, by various print publishers in order to produce woodblock prints. The system consisted of the following professions; publisher, artist, carver, and printer.

Tetsuya Noda (b 1940) - is a contemporary print artist, photographer and professor emeritus at Tokyo University of the Arts