UW Art Professors Exhibition at Plaza Diane Community Center

An exhibition, “Grazer,” by University of Wyoming Department of Art Professor Mark Ritchie, is on display at the Plaza Diane Community Center for the Arts in downtown Powell through March 14.

In the “Grazer” exhibition, the horse “is a personal narrative, a powerful metaphor and an exploration of the thin line between wild and domestic,” Ritchie says in his artist statement. “Spending time working with a domesticated feral horse, a mustang, has provided me the opportunity to experience the interaction within communities of horses.”

He also considers how horses and humans establish boundaries and respect space.

“It also has meant considering the complex issues surrounding the issues of the wild horse/feral horse populations in the American West,” Ritchie says.

Ritchie, who works between printmaking and drawing, received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Kansas. He then spent a year at South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education in Cardiff, Wales, and at Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was awarded a master of fine arts degree in printmaking from Indiana University in 1990.

Before coming to UW, Ritchie taught at universities in Georgia and Texas. He has exhibitions displayed nationally and internationally, but prefers the “quiet, windy solitude of Wyoming as a place to live and work” with his wife, artist Leah Hardy, and son, Ky.

For more information, contact Karen Roles, Plaza Diane coordinator, at (307) 272-8066 or visit www.plazadiane.org.