Barry Ratliff

Raised in Boulder, Colorado, I attended Northern Arizona University, Western State College (Colorado), and finally the University of Colorado-Boulder, where I received a BFA in Fine Arts-1981, and a Masters of Fine Arts-Printmaking, in 1984. Now I am a clerk, muddling about in the misdst of millions of books in the library at the Univ. of Colorado.

I've been doing the portrait pieces for the last seven years or so. I model the originals in an oil based clay. Then I make a rubber mold from the original. I cast the final material, (a fancy gypsum cement and finely powdered metals), into the mold. The piece then has a patina applied to it. There are very few pieces cast, and while the mold casting process lends itself to producing 'editions', each one of the pieces is a bit different from the others.