Elevator Speech

Going on the air with ELPO - ELPO stands for Emeralda: Learn Printmaking Online—a project that has been years in development. Now there’s a chance to give an elevator speech on the radio, and the concept designer tries his hand at writing text for the team’s great, idealistic notion. 268 Words. sp100210. ©2010 Bill Ritchie.

Sunday Paydirt

Hitting pay dirt in a game - It seems to him like he’s hit pay dirt at last. “Pay dirt” comes from the gold rush days, when you find gold in your diggings. Digging into a casual game to find clues in making a printmaking game, the author comes to a mini game that seems to be useful. 334 Words. sp100131. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Boring Games

Boredom sets in this time around - His self-assigned task is to play a computer game out to its end, but it gets tougher and tougher because the games follow the same form. Halfway through the game he’s had it, but there is still work to do—which is to come up with his own printmaking game. 684 Words. sp100121. ©2010 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Flash EATC

Searching for a use for a Flash ecard - He’s searching for a way to replace his old, kludgey, time-and-labor intensive Artist Trading Cards with something that can be both virtual (or digital) and also made into real paper cards quickly and cheaply. Text on a flash e-card website helps him out. 475 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. sp091107. full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Baby Picnic

An invitation to a new printmaking world - The author puts himself in the mind of a complete babe in the woods so he can imagine what it’s like to know nothing of a virtual world of learning printmaking online, picturing two people he would like to invite to an online picnic in a kind of 3-D blog. 1231 Words. sp091018. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Press Party

Face to face social networking around a Halfwood Press - It feels like a flash of genius when the author (and designer/builder of an etching press he calls “Halfwood”) considers finding someone to host a press party. In this essay, he tries to outline how it works, and why it’s a benefit to those who attend it. 868 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. sp090908. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Fifth Logline

Keeping it short and simple - A logline is a short elevator-speech version of a movie script or screenplay. It’s what you say when you found yourself in an elevator with someone like Steven Spielberg or George Lucas twenty years ago. That was then; now there’s a virtual world instead.
503 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. sp091008. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Author Screenplay

Bill Ritchie on “Dusty’s Prize” - Writing is one way Bill Ritchie practices his art and craft, a parallel world in the way he addresses the classic question of form and content, form being printmaking, and content coming from literary and narrative art, opening the door to performing arts. 1203 Words. sp090918, ©2009 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Why Cooperate?

First considerations for an international printmaking cooperative - Since the time he visited Paris’s Atelier 17 in 1969, the author has sustained a vision of the benefits of bringing printmakers from all over the whole wide world together for the ostensible reason of making prints. Has the reason why changed in 40 years? 587 Words. ©2009 Bill Ritchie. sp090531. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

On Blogs

Blogs I did not get to write
His day started out not like any other day. Earlier-than-usual to rise, beset by the same cascade of ideas of things to do, things to be done, things to write most important of all; but there’ll be no blog today he decided, because he tidied up his novel. 1128 Words. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com

Franchise Quest

Building a four-legged stool for art education in the age of digital reproduction - Considering a comment by his collaborator, the author attempts to assemble four disparate but complementary pictures described as puzzles. Teaching, research, practice and service principles guide his thinking and assembling them. The goal is a franchise. 1517 Words. Full text by email request: ritchie@emeralda.com.

Halfwood Cruise

Taking the Mini for a cruise
After he designed and tested a miniature etching press, this art teacher planned a course. Cruise passengers can take printmaking classes on an Alaska Cruise that’s unlike any other art course offered onshore. A PDA was his inspiration fourteen years ago. 761 Words. Copyright 2008 Bill Ritchie.Copyright 2008 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request.

Eviscerating Notions

Call for art education reform
At SPEACON, the island of the domain-of-expertise in the Emeralda Region, the Emeralda Inventor and Master role plays a radio talk show after being introduced to a new channel for spoken word dissemination. He uses parts of a real e-mail message to begin. 2162 Words. ©1998 Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. Full text by email request.

Art meets Science and Joe Clark

Reading matter for Joe
Reinventing arts studios may be similar to reinventing the biochemistry labs. These words are from an almost instant custom newsletter the author made to give Joe Clark, president of Videodiscovery, for a visit Joe was paying to Ritchie's Perfect Studios. 1474 Words. Copyright 1991 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request.

Persistent Worlds

Economic modeling in the age of digital reproduction
To this author, persistence is a kind of world, the art world, perhaps with a tenacious, stubborn and unmovable character of an illusionary place with values of its own. That is why he thinks of a place where new ideas are welcome. New ideas need a haven. 992 Words. Copyright 2008 Bill Ritchie. Full text by email request.