Tieton River by Eva Pietzcker - Davidson Galleries

The Tieton River drains the eastern slope of the Washington Cascades, joining the Naches before reaching the Yakima. Pietzcker's print likely captures the river's basalt-bedded character — perhaps a stretch of riffles or the cottonwood-shaded lower canyon. Water surfaces suit the mokuhanga technique: bokashi gradations rendered with damp brush and water-based pigment can suggest current and reflection without explicit line. She prints from cherry (yamazakura) blocks on dampened washi, burnishing with baren. This work belongs to her ongoing engagement with Pacific Northwest waterways, a body of work shaped by her relationship with Davidson Galleries in Seattle. The training she received in 2003 at the Nagasawa Art Park program informs her edge transitions and her measured palette — typically indigo, sumi, and earth tones rather than the saturated mineral pigments of Edo-period nishiki-e. The print reads as a portrait of a specific waterway rather than a topographic record, in keeping with Pietzcker's transposition of meisho-e sensibility onto North American subjects.