Boston's Beacon Street

This woodblock print depicts Beacon Street, one of Boston's most historically significant thoroughfares, running along the north edge of Boston Common past the Massachusetts State House with its golden dome. The street's nineteenth-century brownstone row houses and the formality of its civic architecture give Matsubara strong architectural rhythms to work with. Her mokuhanga technique translates the repetitive facades of Beacon Hill into carved patterns, finding visual music in the rows of windows, stoops, and cornices. The subject places Matsubara in the tradition of artists who have documented Boston's built environment, but her Japanese woodblock method gives the familiar streetscape an unexpected graphic intensity. The black-and-white palette that Matsubara often favors would suit Beacon Street's dignified restraint.