Two Way Traffic

Two Way Traffic takes its title from American road signage and points to one of Dennis's recurring subjects: the ordinary street as a stage for movement. A print under this title would typically show vehicles passing in opposite directions on a small-town road, organized by the strict geometry of the centerline and the framing buildings or roadside structures. Dennis liked the formal opportunity that bidirectional motion offered — two cars or trucks set in mirrored orientations, balancing each other across the sheet — and his cut line could carry that information with very few elements. The flatness of the road surface, the silhouetted vehicles, and the simplified street furniture connect the image to his broader 1986 townscape series and to the larger American tradition of vernacular signage and roadside subjects in twentieth-century printmaking. The compressed, frontal space and reliance on contour rather than modeling also keeps the print in conversation with the Japanese woodblock sources Dennis openly absorbed.