2024 charles spitzack back to earth rock broken glass woodcut print woodblock mokuhanga seattle art artist relief printmaking lino linocut

This 2024 mokuhanga depicts a rock paired with shards of broken glass, a still-life subject that draws on the genre's tradition of close observation while introducing contemporary detritus into the frame. The image's title — "back to earth" — points to themes of decay, weathering, and the slow reabsorption of human-made material into the natural world, a reading reinforced by the contrast between geological permanence and shattered transparency. Working in water-based pigments on washi, Spitzack would have used multiple blocks to register the textured surface of stone against the angular planes of glass, likely employing bokashi gradients to suggest reflection and shadow. The print sits within his broader practice of treating overlooked or peripheral subjects with the deliberateness mokuhanga demands. Among American practitioners working in the Japanese woodblock tradition, Spitzack belongs to a cohort that has carried the medium beyond reproduction of historical motifs and into observational, contemporary subject matter — an approach recognized at the 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference in Echizen.