Watertank, Magnolia

This woodcut depicts an elevated water storage tank in Seattle's Magnolia neighborhood, the bluff-top residential district overlooking Elliott Bay. Such utilitarian structures — water tanks, grain elevators, fishing sheds — are recurring subjects in Dennis's late work, in which he isolates a single piece of civic or industrial infrastructure against compressed surroundings of foliage and sky. The woodcut medium suits this approach: contour lines cut into the block translate the riveted cylindrical form and its supporting lattice into legible silhouette, while flat color areas describe the surrounding trees without atmospheric blending. The Birds and Flowers categorization reflects the framing vegetation, likely the flowering shrubs and madrona trees that gave the neighborhood its name. Dated 2000, the print sits within Dennis's mature graphic vocabulary, which drew openly on European, American, and Japanese sources — the planar logic of Japanese moku hanga is visible in the simplified palette and absence of modeled shading. Like much of his Pacific Northwest output, the image treats an overlooked piece of neighborhood architecture as a subject worthy of sustained attention rather than picturesque scenery.