Joel Timothy KARHU

Born: 1961 in Gifu, Japan
Medium: Color Woodblocks

Joel is the son of the prominent artist Clifton Karhu.  He was raised in Japan, returning to the U.S. for his high school years. Beginning in 1980, he returned to Kyoto to work for his father. 

After summer vacations working in the Studio, he was already very familiar with the operation of woodblock printmaking. He started cutting blocks and doing much of the printing for 16 years, until 1996. At that point he began a business dealing with imported building materials.

 In 2008 after the death of his father, Joel returned to the Karhu Studio to run the remaining business and care for his mother. In 2017 he began making his own woodblock prints in the style of previous work from the Karhu Studio. Specifically, he is focusing on landscapes and the architecture of his hometown, Kyoto.

 His first show was in Tokyo in 2019, and we are pleased to be the first American gallery to represent this fine artist. Joel has a mastery of both color and design in creating vivid appealing images.