Select Page

Bill Vivona “Nearly True Stories” colored pencil and ball point pen on reclaimed card stock, $200.00

Bill Vivona “Nearly True Stories” colored pencil and ball point pen on reclaimed card stock, $200.00

“Nearly True Stories” colored pencil, and ball point pen on reclaimed card stock, 5” x 12” 2021, $200.00
How does one compose one of these ‘artist’s statements” without sounding pretentious(?). Art is really pretty simple. Anyone can make it, and anyone should be able to look at it and appreciate it, understand it. Art is almost always all about ‘story-telling’; what I saw, what I think about something, how I can use materials to interpret an influence, and how I can communicate those things that I saw and experienced to other people in a way that they can understand. It makes no sense for me as an artist to alienate viewers with fancy terms and concepts that only make sense to me. It would be pretty lonely to create work that only communicates to myself.

The cartoons that you are viewing here are part of a series that started, for me, 15 years ago. I was teaching Advanced Placement Art at New Providence High School, and I was trying to get my students to understand that artists make art everyday; they force themselves to find subject matter, everyday. No small feat. And so I assigned the students, 21 of them, to create a drawing everyday, in addition to our class work and art homework assignments (I would provide all the materials, which the students were to pick up after school in advance); the students were to create a small art work.……drawing, collage, pencil, crayons, painting, in any material, at home; the size was to be 4″ x 6″.

The work was to be handed in at the beginning of each class. This assignment was to take place for one month, and the artworks were to be turned in each day. My room had a huge floor-to-ceiling cork wall. I hung the works on the wall each day as the students submitted them and by the end of the month, we had hundreds of small works of art displayed on that wall. To demonstrate that this was not ‘busy work’, I committed to do the assignment, too. I never stopped; I have over 5000 of these, in many different materials and subject matters, carefully organized, chronologically, in albums.

Skills

Posted on

July 25, 2021

Skills

Posted on

July 25, 2021