Wyckoff Co.

The Wyckoff Company operated a wood-treatment and creosote facility on Eagle Harbor at Bainbridge Island, Washington, from the early 20th century until its closure, after which the site became one of the Pacific Northwest's most prominent industrial cleanups. Dennis's print gives the subject a graphic stability: tall stacks, conveyor structures, lumber piles, and the perimeter fence are the kind of architectural-industrial vocabulary the woodcut renders directly, with carved silhouettes set against flat ground and sky. The 1996 date places the print in the period of the site's most publicized environmental remediation, and the choice to depict it fits Dennis's career-long attention to working and post-working industrial landscapes of Puget Sound. The image carries no overt editorial position; like much of his industrial work, it documents a particular structure with a graphic neutrality reminiscent of the meisho-e tradition, where named locations are recorded as much for their identifying silhouette as for any narrative content.