bank on main street spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art

An urban architectural subject likely depicting a commercial bank building positioned along a main thoroughfare, rendered through the labor-intensive mokuhanga process Spitzack practices. The piece participates in an American urban-vernacular tradition translated through Japanese water-based woodblock printing — a synthesis Spitzack's Seattle-based studio has cultivated. Compositionally, architectural mokuhanga tends toward registered linework carved on cherry or shina blocks, with broad color areas printed on dampened washi using the baren. Bokashi gradations may articulate sky, shadow, or reflected facade light, while the carved key-block defines the building's structural geometry. The title's specificity — Main Street rather than a generic streetscape — points to a documentary impulse, treating contemporary American civic architecture as worthy subject matter in the same way Edo-period meisho-e elevated famous places. This grounding in the observed local environment distinguishes Spitzack's practice from purely decorative or imitative Western mokuhanga and contributes to the body of work that earned recognition at the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference.