2024 spitzack fort worden butterfly cosmos flower blooming fly bug woodcut print woodblock mokuhanga seattle art artist relief printmaking lino linocut

This 2024 print pairs a butterfly cosmos in bloom with a fly, a composition that places the work squarely within the kacho-e tradition of insects-and-flowers studies. The cosmos — an annual prized for its open, daisy-like flower head — and the visiting fly together compress a small ecological transaction into a single frame, recalling the close-observation impulse of historical Japanese flower-and-insect prints while taking a Pacific Northwest garden as its source. In water-based mokuhanga, the challenge of such a subject lies in registering the fine structures of petals, stamens, and insect legs without losing the medium's characteristic softness; Spitzack would likely have reserved a dedicated block for the linear elements, with bokashi reserved for the gradation across petal surfaces. The print belongs to a Fort Worden-rooted body of work that includes tree studies and bird-and-flower compositions, and reflects the contemporary American mokuhanga movement's tendency to apply traditional Japanese genre categories to local flora and fauna rather than imported subjects.