MOST RECENT WORK
The works of art to be viewed will be focused on not only capturing an idea but
developing it. How intrinsically important the process is to the physical expression. By
incorporating 40 years of brutal scars left in my work table and then hammered into the
metal itself to illustrate this challenges of chasing the aesthetic core. This, being the
essence of what ripples through an artists life, creating a type of masterful process of
evolution. I’m creating over thirty closed loop “icons” and “silhouettes” of complex value.
A dotted line is created capturing the process of growth and change as a tree
creates chlorophyll producing photosynthesis from night to day, winter to spring, a
continuous cycle.
Shifting from a cryptic iconography to a symbolic word salad of contemporary western
and social media, I have recycled the vinyl weeding from a sign shop. Burnishing the
discarded negative and positive words and imagery of signage to aluminum as a resist
in the acid baths used for printmaking, I’ve symbolically made a statement that points at
how disposable everything has become. From belief systems, social constructs, news to
art. Yet, we still make something of it.
By creating intaglio and embossed prints, I can now take the deeply etched plates and
hammer them into curved forms, sculpting them into a different level all together of
jewelry like questions, that one is not sure about or know where to place. Do they hang
on a wall, sit on a coach, table, or sit on the floor. Intentionally I have tried to challenge
even the application of function by display.

PAINTING
Over the last twenty five years Charles Wooldridge has been recognize for his scientific
approach to art. Through such articles as seen in the September/October 00 issue of
The Pastel Journal, a three-page article describes how “uniquely innovative, creative
and complex this process is.” Dr. Susan C. Cooper expressed that “Charles has
reinvented chalk pastels. Museum of Fine Art, Prague, Arts and Crafts
Magazine,1997 ,Jan Kriz Ph. ‘97

SCULPTURE
Charles’s sculpture is another powerful expression of his talent and inner-vision, his
work was described in the Rocky Mountain News, Oct 5, 2001, by art critic Mary Voelz
Chandler as “brutal but honest”. While other critics in Europe such as Jan Kriz Ph. D.,
president of the Czech division of Art Critics AICA writes, “With Wooldridge, everything
is perfect. There is a certain amount of morality in it. The work represents coherence of
the world…and the quarantine of the spiritual identity.”
Some of his sculptures revolve around a unique concept called “Cusp Theory”. This is
where different sets of data converge, creating sculpture-like logarithms. If one set of
data is more progressive than the other, the balance of negative space will start to
destroy the sculpture. In turn this concept acts as a model for understanding non
sustainable environments, genome research, market place relationships and corporate
structuring. This has placed him as a keynote speaker in the 2004 International Arts and
Math Conference held at The University of Colorado, Boulder, with such other key-note
invited presenters as:
Bill Casselman, Donna Cox, Helaman Ferguson (unconfirmed), Miller Puckette, Michele
Emmer, Anthony Phillips, Charles Wooldridge, Dismas Rotta, Richard Taylor, and Anna
Ursyn.

Charles says “Sculpture is an extension of my paintings, for taking a proven, two-
dimensional image and bringing it to a three-dimensional form, is like having the concept
of line prove the idea of edge. The materials he works with range from stone,
glass, fiberglass, and wood to hand-fabricated stainless steel and bronze formed in
repoussé.

Over the last two years he has been obsessed with the recorded histories left behind in
objects thought of as having a “patina”. Where men, not just specific to Him, have
worked for thousands of hours, hammering, drilling, filing and grinding a history of every
project encountered. Here he has taken softer metals and hammered them so hard, into
these worked surfaces, that it is like a needle to wax rerecording every nick and texture
ever left creating a type of visual medium that would play like a record.