MI-LAB Artist-in-Residence, Japan, 2021

In 2012, under a Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs grant, Jacqueline Gribbin was invited to MI-LAB Artist-in-Residence Program to practice mokuhanga or water-based woodblock printmaking.

The residency took place in icy and snowy conditions in Japanese winter in a studio at the base of the iconic Mt Fuji, near Lake Kawaguchi, Yamanashi Prefecture.

The residency resulted in a series of mokuhanga prints based on the theme of ‘kisaragi’, the Japanese word for February in the traditional Japanese calendar. It has a literal translation of “wear more clothes'“ or the “rebirth of plants”.

Jacqueline also created a small mokuhanga book, which illustrates views of Mt Fuji seen from her window each morning. The changing aspects of Mt Fuji were dependent upon weather and cloud formations around or over it. The book’s title in Japanese is ‘tenshin’, which translates as changing course or direction, or shifting position. The book contains twenty images.