Two Down, One to Go

Richard Wagener

Though elegant in design and rendering, Two Down, One to Go is a stark reminder that drastic changes to our climate are transforming our landscape. Climate change or global warming is affecting ecosystems in the Sierra Nevada region because the environment is changing faster than the trees can adapt. That change is largely due to higher temperatures and less rainfall as well as logging and wildfires. According to an NPR report, some of the tall, stately trees that have grown up in California's Sierra Nevada are no longer compatible with the climate they live in. Hotter, drier conditions driven by climate change in the mountain range have made certain regions once hospitable to conifers—such as sequoia, ponderosa pine and Douglas fir—an environmental mismatch for the cone-bearing trees. This report also states that about twenty percent of all Sierra Nevada conifer trees in California are no longer compatible with the climate around them and are in danger of disappearing.

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, 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. 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.