Artist Talk at the Alexander Black House

Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation announces End of the Line Artist’s Talk with Bill Ratcliffe on Saturday, June 18, at 11:00 am in the Alexander Black House main galleries, 204 Draper Road SW, Blacksburg, VA, blacksburgmuseum.org, 540-443-1600. Admission is free and is open to the public.

Ratcliffe, a native of southwestern Virginia, first worked in a darkroom in 1993 and went on to earn a BFA and MFA in fine art photography at Radford University. He has worked as a freelance photographer, exhibiting artist, and photography instructor. Ratcliffe has exhibited in numerous solo, group, and juried shows across the states. His images have been published in magazines in the US and the Philippines, and he has received numerous awards for his photography.

End of the Line, Ratcliffe’s multi-media exhibition, now on view at the Alexander Black House, examines the final destination for most consumed goods, the landfill. This exhibit allows for the viewing of sites rarely seen by the general public.

As Ratcliffe considers the spaces occupied by our waste, “they represent the idea of a magical place called away where things can be sent and forgotten. With examination, these places may help us to heal from our obsession to consume at all costs. In the United States alone, an estimated total of 146 million tons of material went into landfills in 2018. Sites such as those featured in this body of work address aspects of the burial of solid waste,” says Ratcliffe, “as much as we love to buy things, no one wants to pay for their disposal.”