Ken Ragsdale
The Hundred-Acre Wood
December 2, 2015–January 3, 2016
Based on his fond memories of growing up in a farming community in Northern Idaho, Ken Ragsdale’s The Hundred-Acre Wood is a labor-intensive project that brings together the artist’s expertise in drawing, sculpture, and photography. Each color image begins as a drawing, which Ragsdale then translates into three-dimensional white vellum paper models, all of which are cut out in single pieces, folded, and held together with tabs. As the final step, the artist enlists colored lights to bring these monochromatic cut-outs of homes, farms, logging sites, and Pacific Northwest wilderness to life in front of the camera. In addition to The Hundred-Acre Wood, Blue Sky will also exhibit selections from three of Ragsdale’s previous photographic series, all of which have informed the artist's most recent work on display.
“I have attempted to develop a pictorial language, which communicates these ideas of memory, place, tension, and anticipation by connecting a representation of the viewable world to the conjured images of my memory. On one hand, I try to produce an effect of time compressed, obliterating the minutia of life, while on the other, exploiting the physical structure of this minutia, enlarging and expanding it to the point of overwhelming time.”
Ken Ragsdale is a Pacific Northwest native currently living and working in Albany, New York. He earned his BFA in painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art before receiving his MFA from the University of Albany, SUNY. His work has been exhibited in many regional, national, and international venues and he is currently represented by Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. Ragsdale also serves as a lecturer in the art department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.