storm drain spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art

"Storm Drain" turns the mokuhanga medium toward urban infrastructure, with the print's Rain tag suggesting a depiction of water entering a street grate during a downpour. The subject extends the Japanese tradition of weather-conscious printmaking — Hiroshi Yoshida and Kawase Hasui both treated rain as a primary atmospheric subject — into the specifically American genre of street-level industrial detail. Mokuhanga's water-based pigments handle wet surfaces with a fluency oil-based inks cannot match: [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations on dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) produce the soft, irregular transitions characteristic of water on pavement, and the layered registration of multiple blocks allows for the dark recesses of the drain to read against the wet asphalt around it. As a Seattle-based artist, Spitzack works in a city where rain is a defining environmental fact, and the print belongs to a strain of his practice that treats Pacific Northwest weather and urban surfaces through a traditional Japanese technique.