Bill Ritchie Artwork in Washington State
in
the
Jack Stewart Collection
Little Wave Square
Provenance: 1980. Wooden object. Laminated wood stem and head, stained and painted. Natural wood color and black head. Width 3 5/8 in., length 10 in., height 3 1/2 in. One of five made. Signed on underside.
Backstory: The wave square began as a drawing titled, "C-Square," and evolved through different shapes such as twisted-square, Tree Square, loops and the wave square. All were imaginary engineers and architects tools for alternate universes where the straight line and right-angle appeared in these forms. The box in the illustration contains artifacts from 1980 when the wave square was made into machine-readable data and output to hardcopy. In those days, data was recorded on audio tape and stored as punchcards to drive the pen plotter to make the books on vellum.
Comment: After Keith Beckley and I made the 29-foot 1977 Bumbershoot Wave Square, I wanted to make dozens of tabletop sized wave squares. I learned how to make a mold, press thin sheets of birch and laminate them to create the wave shaped stem. It was more difficult than you can imagine! I had to be satisfied with five. A collector bought four that I showed at the Erica Williams/Ann Johnson show. My parents held on to the last one, and when they died it came back to me. The wave square was installed at Bumbershoot in 1976 with the help of Greg Both. I made a videotape documenting it and Colleen Chartier was the photographer.
About Jack Stewart: I met Jack online years ago and we carried on a chat then; one day in 2002 he walked into the Capitol Hill location where I was doing The Professor's Cabinet - a temporary gallery and workspace in a kind of international mall of arts and crafts. Jack took the poster home that day. We kept in touch, and he visited the shop on Taylor Avenue and spotted a little wave square and a wavy square and said he'd get those someday.
Cyanotype 1981 Poster
Provenance: 1981. Six-color offset lithograph. Tones of blue, overprinted with transparent gloss yellow process PMS inks on white 165 lb Warren Patina pH Neutral paper. 40 X 24 3/4 in.
Comment: Though this poster was printed by offset litho, we made the plates from hand drawn masters. To create the blended colors I worked with the plate maker and printer plus I mixed the inks. Three sources make the image: A map of the Colorado River, a leaf-like diagram I used for computer animation and the famous woodblock print by Hokusai titled The Great Wave . . . I was influenced by cartography, computer technology and Japanese culture and also names of my family and studio mates.
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