Bill Ritchie's art in Hawaii
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in the

Ruth and Bob Dunn Collection

     
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Study for Locus 3

Provenance: Cyanotype. Prussian blue on white. Image 41 X 23 1/2 in. Rives BFK, 42 X 24 in. paper.

Back story : I created over 50 hand-made cyanotypes (blueprints) in sunlight in the open air outside my studio. I created the layers of imagery from cartography, the movies, Japanese wood block prints, and computer shape tables. While this is a photographic process, it's unique because the transparent masters or plates are not reduced, enlarged, or half-tone-screened. Each layer is hand-cut and drawn on Mylar and tracing paper.

To create the blended gradations of cyanotype blue color, I shaded the sunlight and sometimes I got effects with water and rain.  (Cyanotype is also called ?Blue Process Photography? and was invented around 1840.)

There were three main sources of images for the handmade transparent masters: A map of the Colorado River, leaf-like or heart-shaped diagrams used in computer plotting, and the famous Japanese print by Hokusai, The Great Wave. I replaced the boats in the print with his own ?C? Squares. I used this print as a master to create my six-color offset poster in 1982 and calls it the ?mother of all posters.? (See image of this poster below).

Shown above is a black-and-white one similar to the color print in the Lewis' collection, Number 11, and others.

Click here to see a video of printing another version in this theme

The transcript can now be downloaded free: Transcript

Offset poster based on number 38 from the same series


 

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Email: ritchie@seanet.com