2024 spitzack nw hiking fantasies train bridge mountain woodcut print woodblock mokuhanga seattle art artist relief printmaking lino linocut

A 2024 print combining a train bridge and mountain into a composite Pacific Northwest landscape titled as a "hiking fantasy"—indicating an imagined or idealized scene rather than a specific location. The genre of meisho-e in classical Japanese printmaking often produced views that combined and rearranged landscape elements for compositional effect rather than topographic accuracy. The bridge-and-mountain pairing recalls Hokusai's "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji," which uses engineered structures—wells, scaffolding, bridges—to scale and frame the mountain. Mokuhanga handles the compositional demands of such a subject through multiple blocks: the linear precision of a bridge requires sharp carving and tight registration, while mountains permit broader bokashi-rendered planes. The print belongs to a body of 2024 work in which Spitzack treats Pacific Northwest geography as both subject and source material for invented compositions.