MANCHESTER — Now on display at Southern Vermont Arts Center are two complementary mokuhanga exhibitions.
“Hiroshige and the Changing Japanese Landscape” is a presentation of Utagawa Hiroshige’s (1797-1858) Japanese woodblock prints depicting how the political climate during 19th-century Japan influenced its art and how the art influenced that climate. The exhibition will be on view through Feb. 27.
Featured in this exhibition is Hiroshige’s full series of the Hoeido Tokaido that elevated him to the country’s most esteemed woodblock print masters through his treatment of the landscape as the main subject. Over the course of 55 images, the series takes the viewer on a journey along the Great Tokaido, an important coastal road that connected Edo (now Tokyo) to Kyoto, more than 300 miles away.
The whole exhibit is from the collection of Steven Schlussel, an arts center artist-member who has been collecting for over half a century. In addition, the arts center has invited New Hampshire-based artist Matt Brown to create a display of authentic tools and materials to bring to life the basic process of Japanese printing from multiple color wood blocks. A selection of Brown’s prints are on display in the Wilson lobby.
Over in the Yester House, a complementary exhibition, “The World Between The Block And The Paper,” is up through March 27. This exhibition is organized in partnership with The Mokuhanga Sisters, a print collective, that met at the Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory, in the shadow of Mt Fuji, Japan, and bonded through their practice of mokuhanga.
More information is at svac.org.
