Black Bear

Richard Wagener

A curious black bear (Ursus americanus) faces the viewer with ears turned forward; perhaps it wonders what you're thinking, as the viewer does about it. Richard Wagener uses hundreds of short, directional engraved lines to create a "texture" that conveys the heft and softness of North America's most common - and smallest - Ursus species.

Of note regarding Wagener's woodengraving technique is his exclusive use of the single-line as opposed to using multiple-line carving tools, meaning that each line, in its delicate uniformity, is carved individually. He carefully cuts away what he does not want to print and what is left prints black.

Richard Wagener was born on September 3, 1944, in Texarkana, Arkansas. A notable American wood engraver, his works have been collected by over seventy-five public institutions. He studied Biology at the University of San Diego and earned an MFA in painting from Art Center School, Los Angeles (now Pasadena), California.

In 2006, Wagener established the imprint 'Mixolydian Editions' for his own fine press projects. The first publication was Cracked Sidewalks, vignettes and prose poems about growing up in Los Angeles. The second book was Mountains & Religion, twenty engravings based on imagery from a journey to Nepal and Tibet in 1995, published in 2011.

Wagener has also produced a number of engraved bookplates that have been collected internationally. He designed the ex-libris logo for the XXVII FISAE Congress held in Boston, 2000. His bookplates have been featured in Print Magazine; Contemporary Ex-Libris Artists, article by James Keenan, published in Portugal, 2003; California Bookplates by Robert Dickover, published by the Book Club of California, 2006; and Three Centuries of the American Bookplate by James Goode, the catalog accompanying a show of bookplates at the University of Virginia in 2010. Wagener has also made a number of large scale wood-cut interpretations of his wood engravings published by Magnolia Editions, Oakland, California.