Two Down, One to Go is a woodengraving created in 2022 by American artist, Richard Wagener. It is pencil signed, dated and editioned 16/21 on the recto and pencil titled by the artist on the verso. Two Down, One to Go was printed by the artist on ivory Zerkall smooth wove paper and the image measures 7-3/8 x 4-7/16 inches.
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 hospital 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.
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.
