Bill Ritchie design in Canada
was formerly in the
Jean Wrohan Collection
Photo by Jean Wrohan, owner of the print for 50 years
"Target in the Water"
Provenance: 1969. Print. Intaglio with chine-colle. Graphic Chemical Black ink on Van Gelder Zonen buff-colored paper with white paper chine-colle'd on. 3 1/2 X 3 5/8 inche image area. Number 3/10. Printed by the artist, titled "Target in the water," and signed, lower right. Purchased at a Democrat Party Art Auction by the late Keith Kirkpatrick, who gifted it to Jean, a longtime friend. Also gifted to Tom Blue, and purchased by Dan Carmichael, Laura Jackson, Madalon and Rod Lalley, and Lois Byron Meyer.
About Jean Wrohan: She is a Nia Green Belt Teacher and practitioner in Campbell River, BC. On the web she wrote: "I discovered Nia later in life, and fell in love immediately. It speaks to my inner child, my pleasure centre, and the woman warrior in me. I especially enjoy sharing movement, music, and magic with students who didn't know their dancing side, or who are a little older than the average fitness buff. I know that much of aging is only the outcome of limiting beliefs, and I revel in destroying those! For further information about my classes, please e-mail me - niajean@shaw.ca"
Bill Ritchie comments: Jean sent an email to me in 2015, asking about ways to sell the etching and thus pass along. ". . . perhaps someone else would appreciate it more than I," she wrote, "I just feel that the real point of an artist’s work is at the time of the process, the rest is artifact. Pleasant artifact nevertheless." We exchanged emails and she sent me the image of her impression of "Target and Water" Number 3/10. As so often happens, my print was a vehicle for me in surprising ways--learning about Nia, for example, and what this movement can mean to those who practice it. Art moves in strange ways.
As a footnote, Jean's observation, "the real point of an artist’s work is at the time of the process, the rest is artifact." hits the bulls-eye of the target, what I have come to call the "moment number," the moment and the place when a print is pulled from the plate. A moment number replaces the edition number conventionally used in publishing fine art prints and is expressed as the time and the GPS coordinates of the place where the print was pulled from the plate. The moment number is part of my planned game, "Proximates."
If I had known in 1969 what I know now, this print would have on its back - instead of 3/10 - the moment number 690927150047.64-122.34, the last digits, GPS, referring to the address of my studio in 1969 (360 Halladay Street, Seattle) and the time estimated to be 1500, or 3 PM. You can Google the address and see the house where I had my basement studio for, "Target in the Water."
She mused, "Why would a target be in the water, anyway?" and the answer to this is a story in itself but, in sum, in the water the shape is like a heart. Plus the choice of a target came from my early morning walks to teach school, passing an archery field. Also, there was the book, "Zen and the Art of Archery," and a comment by an artist, the late Stephen Hazel: "You are both the archer and the target."
Note that the work is for sale - contact information, below.
A two-minute video of the return of the print to the artist is available here.
See the Patron's List for more peoples' collections - click here