Bill Ritchie's art in Seattle
 
in the

Dan Mayer Collection

School of Wave Squares

Provenance: 1979. Intaglio printed from etched plate. Image 12 X 9 in on 15 1/2 X 10 1/2 in Van Gelder Zonen paper. Number ___ , possibly one of 76 impressions from an edition published by Davidson Galleries. Signed lower right. Purchased at the Erica Williams/Anne Johnson Gallery, Seattle. See also the Clint Pehrson, Jundt Art Gallery and the Ann Shafer Collections.

Artist's Comment: The Wave Square had evolved from my "Squares" series (originating in a distorted T-Square like those that engineers and architects used t have on their drafting tables). At one point I used an architect's program to give me hundreds of views of the wave square, drawn on a computer plotter. Some of these views became the masters for a soft-ground etching for the print, "Wave Square School". The plotter drew on thin tracing paper, so when I overlaid them I could see several layers of the image.

Back story: At a fish hatchery once I was looking in deep water I could see nothing, then I realized all I could see were thousands of fishes, a school. Like that school, I imagined thousands of T-squares--now they are wave squares--in fathoms of water. This print was published by Sam Davidson, and later I made variations on it. It inspired me to think of a moving image, where the spaceship crash started, the camera zoomed in and resolved in an image of these swimming wave squares.

Provenance: 2005. Mixed media. Paint, laserprints, clockwork. Black and multiple-colored stamps. 12" X 12". Signed in the face. Purchased at the 9-1-1 Fundraiser in honor of Anne Focke.

Artist's comment: Inspired by an invitation to produce an artist's clock for the 9-1-1 Fundraiser in honor of Anne Focke, I made two clocks and donated them to the auction. Afterwards, I made one for myself. The clock has all forty of my 40-year retrospection stampworks, plus stamps for each of the 12 numbers around the face.