Monadenium canelii, Huntington II

Richard Wagener

This composition of a succulent is one of twenty-five engravings that Wagener anticipates will appear in a book. He was first inspired to try a botanical subject while hiking in Joshua Tree National Park and a short time later, while visiting the Huntington Library and Garden, he was introduced to other plants that he found visually interesting yet challenging to him as an artist. Wagener created a number of works based upon the various cacti in the Huntington Gardens. He first titled them Huntington I, Huntington II, etc., but has since added their scientific names.

Richard Wagener was born in Texicana, Arkansas in 1944. He 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.

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.