Bill Ritchie's art in Washington State
in
the
Presha Sparling & Keith Beckley Collection
Note: the actual print in the Sparling-Beckley collection
is not
available for photo at this time but this is a reasonable facsimile.
Little Spaceship Crash
Provenance: 1977. Print. Intaglio, relief, stencil, litho. Colors uncertain at this writing but may have been ochre, red, blue, black, gray. Image 12 X 9 in on 15 X 11 3/4 in Van Gelder Zonen (natural, buff) paper. No. 35/35. Signed lower right.
About Presha Sparling & Keith Beckley: Presha and Keith both took printmaking classes at the UW and we stayed in contact for years afterward. They were instrumental in several special events involving my art and collected a number of my artworks. Twice they hosted us as guests in their house in Sayulita, Mexico. We remained friends many years and I enjoyed tracking their successes in real estate sales and private home construction.
Comment: Spanning two years of development and about 75 impressions, Little Spaceship Crash was the seed for a larger work. These came out of the movie, Planet of the Apes. I like to tell the story about the path flown by the helicopter filming it, and then my entry into computers graphics and how I learned the X-Y-Z of IT. This print was test of methods I would need for a larger version, then the tests resulted in an edition that stood on its own.
Institutions and corporate collections: Art Planning Consultants, New York, NY; Baker University, Baldwin, KS; Landau/Alexander Gallery, Los Angeles CA;Oregon Arts Commission; Bill Mally Collection, University of Washington IMS, Seattle, WA; Norton Building, Seattle, WA; Teller Training Institute, Seattle, WA; United Pacific Reliance Corporation, CA; USIA Tokyo, Japan.
Exhibitions: Anne Hughes Gallery, Portland, OR; Davidson Galleries, Seattle (where it won an award), WA; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA; Impressions Gallery, Boston, MA; Kiku Gallery, Seattle, WA; Silvermine Guild of Arts, New Canaan, CT; US Information Agency, Tokyo Japan; Visual Arts Center, Anchorage, AK
Placeholder, the image above is a placeholder to indicate
the general composition of Sparling-Beckley's print.
Locus and Sea Squares
Provenance: Print. From a variable edition of 141. Both the lacquered copper plate and the woodblock is in the Buzz
Pearson collection.
Click here to see the process of Bill printing this print
and the printed transcript by selecting: Transcript
Comment: This print is from a series of 141 trial proofs and artist's proofs in "cycles" of approximately 15 each, of different color series. They are proofs which I made in the processes of cyanotype, woodcut, and intaglio techniques. The result is a series of monotypes. The images derive from three sources: The map is based on the Colorado River, a vicinity known once as the Crossing of the Fathers; the leaf-like shape I call locus--the path of a moving point (I drew these to help establish data for use in a computer program). The Great Wave was drawn to resemble the famous print by Hokusai. Besides the pleasure of meeting people who want to take this print into their personal collections, I have shown the print numerous times and it has given me many rewards, nationally & regionally.
See the Patron's List for more peoples' collections - click here