save toketee kill lolita orca killer whale spitzack woodblock woodcut mokuhanga print printmaking washi seattle art

The title combines two environmental subjects: Toketee Falls in Oregon and Lolita (Tokitae), the Southern Resident orca held in captivity at Miami Seaquarium and a long-running focus of Pacific Northwest activist campaigns. The print engages with regional environmental advocacy. As a Seattle-based mokuhanga artist, Spitzack draws on the iconography of orcas and Northwest waterways. Composition likely features the killer whale's black-and-white markings, well-suited to mokuhanga's capacity for crisp registration of flat color areas. Water-based pigments printed by hand with the baren can achieve the depth needed for the orca's black body alongside bokashi gradations for water or sky. This activist subject distinguishes Spitzack's practice from traditional ukiyo-e themes and aligns him with the contemporary American mokuhanga movement that uses the Japanese technique to engage local ecological and political concerns. His 2024 International Mokuhanga Conference recognition in Echizen reflects this kind of culturally hybrid practice.