Escape Emeralda: Bill H. Ritchie's autobiography 1941-1990
About this ebook
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 brought opportunities, there were hidden limitations. In the 1980s I gambled our home to take us on a vast sabbatical research project for the university. We returned to find the school corrupt, and so it ended my career.
Fortunately, I married well. My high school sweetheart, Lynda, stayed with me even on my wayward ventures. In addition she brought two fine daughters to our lives. And had it not been for her ability to restore our property, my exploring would have ended forever. Because, when the art school closed its door, others opened. Everything I learned in nineteen years at the UW prepared me to continue privately. By 1990, I was on cloud nine and the Internet was within my grasp.
These are the words from one of two volumes I illustrated with a thousand pictures. What autobiography of a teaching artist’s life would be complete without pictures? Not only my art, but my students’, and from collaborations with diverse artists, crafts people, designers, and writers. Plus QR codes!
It is for anyone who loves a good read about teaching art as I was known for in Seattle, but also about an old professor’s family, friends, art patrons, and former students who made it possible. It continues in Volume 2. Volume 1 takes this farmboy to the approach of the information superhighway.
About the author
Born in 1941 he became a well-traveled art professor and a teacher of people of all ages. Bill Ritchie left his father’s farm at eighteen and went to college in state universities in Washington and California. At age 25 he was hired at the University of Washington in Seattle, with emphasis on printmaking. At 29 he expanded his teaching to include video and computer art at 38.
Believing that Pacific Northwest regional technologies would be useful to his teaching in the future, he took early retirement at age 44 and started his own studio for teaching, research, practice and services. Teaching in institutions only occasionally, he served as an adjunct professor at The Evergreen State University, University of Oregon, Highline and Shoreline Community Colleges. He and his wife opened the Mini Art Gallery in 2008 for development and display of his art, craft and design as well as a workstation.
For his visual arts, teaching, research and design he won 74 awards, fellowships, grants and prizes. Fifty-nine events included his participation in honors and his contributions. He had 29 solo shows and participated in 249 mixed visual art exhibitions worldwide with works being collected by 582 individuals and 61 public and corporate collections.
He provided for 109 events in public speaking, consulting and workshops on printmaking techniques and history, new technologies and cultural arts entrepreneurship, many with other artists and designers to develop art installations, computer-aided business models and design, manufacturing, marketing and sales of his line of Halfwood etching presses and printmaking toys.
He produced over 200 short videos for sharing on YouTube and Vimeo on subjects ranging from printmaking techniques utilizing his printing press designs to personal musings on art education, research, northwest art history and storytelling.
In his 80s, Bill continues to write essays, fiction and screenplays for elucidation and pleasure, but was also included in others' books, newspapers, newsletters, radio interviews and TV features. He self-published many books ranging from pure speculation to entertainment, allegory and this autobiography.
