2024 spitzack walla walla wa wine wheat fields silo woodcut print woodblock mokuhanga seattle art artist relief printmaking lino linocut

This 2024 print depicts the agricultural landscape of Walla Walla, Washington — a wine and wheat region in the southeastern corner of the state characterized by rolling hills and grain silos. The composition functions as an American counterpart to the meisho-e (famous places) tradition, in which artists such as Hiroshige and Hasui mapped specific Japanese geography through woodblock prints. Wheat fields and silo imagery suggest a horizontal composition, likely with bokashi gradations rendering distance and atmospheric perspective in the manner adapted from earlier mokuhanga landscape practice. The catalog entry's reference to both woodcut and linocut indicates Spitzack may combine relief block types within a single print, a practice common among contemporary American printmakers who treat block material as one variable among many. The Pacific Northwest setting connects this work to a regional sensibility — Spitzack's Seattle base places him within a community of West Coast printmakers who have used mokuhanga to document local geography rather than reaching for distant or idealized subjects.