Betty Sapp Ragan

born Birmingham, Alabama, 1937; died University Place, Washington, 2015

BiographyBetty Ragan received her BA in Studio Arts from Birmingham-Southern College in 1958. After raising her son, she returned to college and earned her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1985. After graduation, she taught art at Auburn University for several years before moving to Tacoma in 1989 to teach photography and printmaking at the University of Puget Sound. She was a faculty member at UPS for over 15 years, retiring in 2004, though she continued to give private lessons until her death. During her long career in the South Sound, she trained and mentored multiple generations of Northwest artists.

Ragan’s earliest works are watercolor and oil paintings. Over time she added collage elements to her paintings, then became interested in photography and printmaking. Her works gradually evolved to include all three processes. Her final works were a series of large acrylic paintings with photographic insets.

Her work has been featured in numerous solo exhibitions as well as in group shows regionally, nationally, and internationally. She received a number of awards during her career including the Camera Club of New York National in 2002 and the Schultz Award for Excellence in Photography in Washington state. In addition to her work as an artist, Ragan also passionately pursued political and social activism. It was revealed after her death that she was a member of the anonymous feminist activist art collective, the Guerrilla Girls, whose works expose gender and ethnic biases in politics, art, film, and pop culture.

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