"Memory is a creative process. The more you remember, the more you invent." Raised in the wake of cultural upheaval in his South Chicago neighborhood - the influx of Mexican, African American and Eastern European workers and families in the early twentieth century, and the subsequent White Flight in the following decades - Ryan felt the constant presence of events that took place before he was born. This is perhaps why his massive drawings, constructed on layered sheets of paper using the simple tools of graphite, ink and gesso, are imbued with a sense of a past that is familiar and alien at the same time.