apt building off 94 spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art

This print depicts an apartment building observed from the side of a numbered highway, applying mokuhanga technique to vernacular American architecture. The subject — a residential structure viewed from a roadway — departs from the landscape and floral motifs traditionally associated with Japanese woodblock printing, instead translating water-based printing into the geometric repetition of multi-unit housing. The flat color planes characteristic of mokuhanga lend themselves to architectural subjects, where blocks of unmodulated color register as windows, siding, and shadowed recesses. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations may articulate the play of light across facades or the haze of distance from a passing vantage point. Spitzack's choice of urban subject matter aligns with a broader tendency in contemporary American mokuhanga, where practitioners trained in the Japanese tradition apply its tools to Western environments. Hand-burnished with a [baren](/glossary/baren) onto absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi), the impression carries the soft tonal quality of water-based pigments. The print situates Spitzack within a regional school of Pacific Northwest printmakers translating observation of the built environment through hand-cut blocks.