High Trail

Richard Wagener

High Trail illustrates the granite peaks of the eastern Sierra range that began to uplift less than five million years ago. Massive granite boulders are strewn about the landscape and trees are dwarfed by the height of the peaks. The eastern Sierra stretches from Lone Pine in the south to the Nevada border. Mount Whitney, the eastern entrance to Yosemite, and Mono and Mammoth Lakes are located within the eastern Sierra.

High Trail will be an illustration in the soon-to-be-released book, From California, which will feature the poetry of Dana Gioia and will be published in April 2024 by the Book Club of California. In 2015, Gioia was named the California State Poet Laureate and held the post until 2018.

Richard Wagener was born in Texicana, Arkansas in 1944. He grew up in southern California, spending time with his grandfather in remote parts of the desert and up in the Sierra mountain range. Early art classes introduced him to Maynard Dixon and Edgar Payne and his after-school activities included selling the evening newspapers at the Disney studios, where he met many of the illustrators and animators. Wagener studied biology at the University of San Diego and earned an M.F.A. in painting from Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.

In 2006, Wagener established the imprint Mixolydian Editions for his own fine press projects. He collaborated with David Pascoe of Nawakum Press, Santa Rosa, California, co-publishing three fine press books, one of which, Loom, earned the 2016 Carl Hertzog Award for Excellence in Book Design. Wagener has also produced a number of engraved bookplates that have been collected internationally. He designed the logo for the XXVII FISAE Congress held in Boston in 2000. His bookplates have been featured in Print Magazine; “Contemporary Ex-Libris Artists,” an article by James Keenan, that was published in Portugal in 2003; California Bookplates by Robert Dickover, published by the Book Club of California in 2006; and Three Centuries of the American Bookplate by James Goode, the catalog accompanying a show of bookplates at the University of Virginia from 2010.

A notable American wood engraver, Wagener's works are held in over 100 public collections in the United States and England. He was awarded the Oscar Lewis Award for contributions to the book arts.