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My life, from my birthday to the last decade of 1900s, is a spectrum of events both good and bad as I follow T. S. Elliot’s lines, “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.” Growing up on my father’s farm, there was plenty of exploration, but I never went back to the farm. Far from it! My explorations took me where no teacher in my main field, which is printmaking, had gone because I was hired at 24 by a major research university where its campus services gave me a head start exploring electronic arts and computers, I could blend with teaching printmaking. Ironically, while these ...
In November 2016, Bill Ritchie decided it was a good time to write his story, his last signal. He joined the first two volumes of his memoir, covering the years 1941 to 1960 - the first generation of his life.He starts his life story with the end of it all - like a ghost giving a minute-by-minute account of the dumping of his life's work - the clearing out of his family's art gallery. Even his tools and supplies are thrown into the back of a junk truck, headed for the landfill.Does it have to end this way? He hopes not; but by picturing the end, he thinks that it won't end the way he describes it. Perhaps by telling his story, his life's work and his life may take on added value. Indeed, it ...
Disclosure: This description was prompted and edited by Bill Ritchie, in Microsoft’s current Copilot, an AI text generator for the second volume of Bill H. Ritchie's two-part autobiography. We traverse the years from 1991 to 2023. Ritchie, a trailblazer in the art world continues his life story. In the first book he told how he embarked on a remarkable odyssey that defied convention and reshaped the art, craft, and design of fine art printmaking. At the tender age of 24, Ritchie secured a groundbreaking position—the youngest ever—in the vibrant city of Seattle. His appointment as a teaching artist in fine art printmaking at the University of Washington marked the beginning of a transfo...
Short summaries of 3,026 essays by Bill H. Ritchie, artist, teacher and visionary drawn from his journals written between 1969 - 2009. He structured the headings of each article according an imaginary place he calls "Emeralda," imagining ten islands on a lake where he, as a recipient of a mythical prize, is encouraged to write freely about anything that seems important to an artist, teacher and philosopher. Mindful of the use of new technologies, each essay summary has key index features which would allow a reader having a computer and optional CD/ROM to retrieve the full text of any article. Or, using freely chosen keywords of their own, find the articles which have those words in them.
He had a nightmare. He dreamed of a dump truck parked in front of his private art museum and workers cleaning everything out and throwing it away. This day should be depressing. But it's not. It's unburdening. He teeter-tottered between virtue and reality for five decades, trying to reconcile his calling with reality.The total of his life's work may be the stuff of landfills - neither museum quality nor right for commercial galleries. Even after millions of hours of practice with so-called old and new technology it may come to this. The nightmare lingered, triggering his decision to write an account of how it all came about.Were there other reasons to start his memoirs? Yes. It's what his mo...
The Mini Halfwood Press was first shown publicly in a park. The designer, artist Bill Ritchie, brought the press along on a family picnic and set up his brand-new, first-ever miniature etching press and began making prints from plates he made on the spot. He drew a tree on a small, shiny copper plate using a sharp steel needle. People walking by on the pathway stopped and stared, and kids ventured up and asked what he was doing. "I'm a printmaker," Bill said, and they watched him pull the first proof. This book, "Making the Mini Halfwood," is his notes that he wrote when was making the press in his press-making workshop in Seattle. It started out to be a how-to book, but the process became so complicated that it was not published, after all. On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of that day in June, 2014, it was decided to proceed despite that the reader may find that making the Mini Halfwood Press is not as easy at it may appear.
"Mac" was on his way to a Halloween Party, dressed like his hero, Rembrandt. To complete his costume, he took his miniature etching press and a printing plate. The plate, however, had a magical effect and landed him on a dung boat in Amsterdam's harbor. It was now 1660, not 2012! Join Mac on the events that followed his unhappy travel in time as he was picked up by a Madam. Lucky she dumped him at Rembrandt's neighbor. However, he was drawn into the complications of Rembrandt's fallen, desparate state. Can Mac help his hero make a comeback? Or will the murderous Madam have her way with poor old Mac?
Subject Matter Expert Bill Ritchie invented a game called "Emeralda: Games for the Gifts of Life." It takes place on ten islands on a great lake in a region called Emeralda. Ritchie claims to have been a Gates Prize winner since 1996. With pictures and words, he explains how each island has its own cultural focus on one of ten domains-of-expertise. The players are Gates Prize winners who bring diversity to these islands so exploration in different fields is encouraged. His contribution to the region is printmaking as his preferred means to teach, learn, research, and produce works of art. Through essays, books, and plays, residents use technologies that are suitable for learning and teaching...
He walked out of a tenured position as an art professor into the uncertain world of making a living on his art. His students had already made their names. One quipped: "You're going to learn what we did when we graduated!" That was in 1985. It took Bill six years, trying ways to earn money to get by: consulting, freelancing, temporary teaching at different colleges and, finally, selling his art. A chance encounter with a salesman led Bill to books about the sales profession and, three years later, writing his own book.This is what came from not only reading but also applying what he found in books like, "Mastering the Art of Selling," and others. Is selling an art? Bill was a snob about art ...