I was always fascinated about how you can tell such a big story through a visual narrative, without even writing anything.

It's just so powerful how you can just put iconography together, and then you create a little world, and then people can find themselves in it too.

Spokane Falls — the roaring cascade that cuts through Spokane — has drawn people to its banks for millennia, including the Spokane tribe, who fished the once abundant salmon runs.

Settlers arrived in the early 1800s, bringing fur trade a sawmill, and railway systems.

Soon, the city was the seat of the “Inland Empire.” By 1883, prosperity had spawned Spokane's first official neighborhood: Browne ' s Addition, with mansions built on a hill above the Spokane River.

But as city fortunes shifted, grand homes were converted into smaller apartments.

This historic neighborhood is where artist Reinaldo Gil Zambrano landed when he moved with his wife to Spokane.

Originally from Caracas, Venezuela, Gil Zambrano has lived everywhere from Costa Rica to Idaho.

Now a woodblock printer, muralist and art teacher at Gonzaga University, he thinks a lot about what makes a home: structurally, societally and metaphorically.

We moved here seven years ago.

It was the first space that I lived in when I moved to Spokane.

I got this really tiny apartment that was probably ten feet by ten feet.

- Yeah.

- And I was all surrounded by my woodblocks and stuff, and I was carving on the floor.

- So houses show up all over your work.

You've lived a lot of different places.

So how do you bring those different views of home into your work?

- I feel that the idea of home is something that I have been trying to define for myself, and often is something that is associated to a house, but sometimes it's detached from the infrastructure of the house, because what matters is the love and the care that a family brings, right, and the community, into that space.

Wanting to build community around a creative home, Gil Zambrano co-founded the Spokane Print and Publishing Center in 2019.

Intended as a hub of creativity, it's also where, during the pandemic, he created his first mural.

Now he has murals all over town.

Having never made a mural before, how did you approach it?

- Instead of painting the mural, I was just thinking about the approach of drawing.

So I was just using cross-hatching.

The way that I developed my illustrations, in the previous sketching that I do for the blocks.

- Right.

- And that pretty much develop into a larger scale that became murals too.

- Yeah, it has the look of the woodblock print with all the cross-hatching.

Since childhood, Gil Zambrano has been inspired to draw with influences ranging from comics to magical realism in Latin American literature.

He always starts with a sketch which might turn up in a mural, screenprint, or woodblock carving.

Sometimes the blocks are even more interesting than the print itself, because they're kind of like a sculpture piece.

The name of the piece is “Arribar” or “Arrival.” So is this idea of how we are so self-centered sometimes that we feel that the things just happen to us, but in reality, there is so much going on at the same time it's just that we're not aware of it.

A hallmark of Gil Zambrano ' s style is isometric projection, an architectural technique that allows you to see three sides of an object at once.

It creates a surreal feeling with impossible and intriguing scenarios.

Adding to this trick: he has to sketch everything in reverse, imagining how the mirror image will emerge from the press.

So how did you come to printmaking?

It wasn't your first choice, right?

No, it wasn't.

I was doing illustrations and I was doing these big charcoal drawings, always trying to get this graphic quality with charcoal and ink.

But then my friend Tim Han, he showed me Korean woodblocks.

So he gave me this tool, my first tool and a piece of block, and I started carving, and I haven't stopped since then.

It's been almost 11 years.

- Wow.

- So you basically go ahead and then just start little by little, removing the surface.

So the whole trick right here is just create, a sense of balance between darks and lights.

So this piece is “Emancipation” and it's based on the first house where my wife and I lived.

And that kind of gave me this idea of this really heavy old house that somehow is like this weight on them, and then you see on this side they're kind of like breaking through, emancipating themselves from then by the pursuit of their passions.

After carving an image, Gil Zambrano begin the process of inking the block, relying on the sound of the ink and how it looks in the light to make sure it's ready.

What I'm doing right now is this process called waking up the ink.

So this is kind of like one of the many sounds of printmaking.

- Mhm.

- The kissing sound between the ink and the slab.

So if it gets too loud, it means that it's too much ink.

- How do you know when you have enough ink on the block?

- So do you remember that velvet texture that you see right here?

- Yes.

- You want to have it on the block.

And also, you see the reflection on the light?

So if you're more in an angle, can you see some brayer marks?

So you know when it's good when everything is uniform.

- Okay.

- So the light tells you what you need to do or whether you have to add more ink.

So how's that looking?

Do you see any more brayer marks?

- It's looking velvety.

Do we need to make an offering to the print gods?

- To the print gods!

We should.

Gil Zambrano ' s works are packed with surprises — volcanoes, alpacas, puffy clouds, and telephone wires.

His animal figures often wear sly smiles or carry houses on their backs, suggesting the ways we bring elements of our past homes to each new community.

The reason you started this print center was to have a community.

So talk about that a little bit, because I do think the history of printmaking is sometimes used in protest.

So how do you feel about the whole community aspect, both in the making and then the meaning?

- I think that that was one of the major parts of me falling in love with this medium was the gathering of the people and the help.

Also it's a medium of empowerment.

Like you can teach somebody how to use this process, and then they're going to bring their own experiences to develop their own visual narratives.

That sense of empowerment has been used in history as a way to provide a voice to the voiceless.

Prints and murals have long been used to spread messages of camaraderie.

In Gil Zambrano ' s hands, through carving and cross-hatching, the story is one of what it means to feel at home.

Art by Northwest was made possible in part with the support of Visit Bellingham, Whatcom County.