"burning from within" woodcut of american flag on fire smoke signal in distress stars and stripes pollution USA flag woodblock green grass contemporary art works on paper printmaker charles spitzack

"Burning from Within" presents the American flag on fire, smoke rising from its surface, set against a band of green grass. The title and imagery operate as political commentary — distress, internal damage to a national symbol — carried through the deliberate, multi-pass labor of mokuhanga rather than the immediacy of protest graphics or screen printing. Producing the image requires careful color separation across multiple blocks: red stripes, white stripes, the blue canton with stars, orange and yellow flame, smoke (potentially rendered through bokashi gradients blended directly on the block face), and the green ground. Each pass demands precise kentō registration to keep the flag's geometry intact. The choice of mokuhanga as the medium for politically charged content situates Spitzack within an ongoing conversation in Western printmaking about whether craft-rooted methods can carry contemporary social commentary without aestheticizing the subject.