summer palace 2025 dry dock sailboat sail boat print fine art seattle port townsend charles spitzack pnw artist printmaker woodcut woodblock mokuhanga

The third dry dock vessel in the Port Townsend series, joining Amazing Grace and Pacific Rose — Summer Palace is the boat's name. The seasonal cue in the title, paired with the Summer tag, suggests Spitzack used either a warmer palette or specific lighting to differentiate this print from its sister images. Working a single subject across multiple variations is a recognized printmaking strategy, both in Edo-period series like Hokusai's views of Fuji and in contemporary mokuhanga where artists explore palette and registration changes against a stable composition. Dry dock orientation gives the cutter clear separations between hull, rigging, and yard architecture, each translating to its own block layer. Mokuhanga's brush-applied pigments suit the soft transitions of summer light — the gradient skies and hazy atmospheres that bokashi technique can produce. The Pacific Northwest setting roots the work in regional American printmaking; the technique anchors it within the post-2000 American mokuhanga movement, in which Spitzack's recognition at the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference in Echizen positions him as a currently active practitioner.