Artist Statement
For my animal portrait drawings, I look for the humorous in the beautiful and the macabre in the cute. I draw inspiration from nature, history, animals, ghost stories, folklore, and old-fashioned photography. My drawings are like Aesop's fables for the post-industrial era.
I like to play with surrealistic juxtapositions of animals in a man-made environment - either posing as a person or replacing man-made technology - to illustrate the ways people and animals are similar but also to create unusual, humorous or vaguely unsettling images.
Sometimes I focus on times when human history clashed with natural history, such as in my Extinct Birds series, which shows birds that have gone extinct as a result of direct human interference. I depicted the birds dressed in clothing that was fashionable during the year that they went extinct as a way of visually connecting the animal's history with our own.
In other drawings, I imagine an alternate history where animals have taken the place of humans, like in my Explorers and Gilded Age series. For The Gilded Age, I replaced the human subjects in the photos with animals as a way to illustrate character traits - such as fearful, enigmatic, mournful, dominant or pitiable - that we often also associate with animals. The animals in these drawings become visible manifestations of these traits underneath the domesticated "gilding" that humans have cultivated to mask their primal, animalistic nature.
Another one of my latest projects involves illustrating the "Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods" - fantastical fictional creatures conjured up by lumberjacks while they sat around their campfires. These Fearsome Critters were their way of explaining unknown sights and sounds in the vast forests of North America.
Extinct Birds postcard collaboration \ 09.2014
I had the honor of collaborating with German poet Mikael Vogel, who wrote poems about several of the extinct birds in my drawing series and then created postcards that he distributed in cafés and coffee shops around Berlin.
Mikael and I continue to work together; our most recent collaboration is an illustrated poetry book, to be published in Spring 2018.
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Teaching Experience
I've taught college-level art classes at my alma mater, CCAD, since 2008. Some of the courses I have taught include:
- Figure Drawing
- Intro to Design and Color
- Digital Design and Typography
- Design and Visual Culture
- Art Crime: Heists and Forgeries
Honors Seminars:
- Art at Risk: The Illegal Antiquities Trade
- Defeating the Ideal: Art & Propaganda
Exhibitions
2017
Hit the Hop, at Studios on High Gallery, Columbus, Ohio.
2016
Columbus Open Studio and Stage Tour. Curated by Amy Liebrand, Lisa McLymont, Stephanie Rond, and Catherine Bell Smith.
Monsters in America, at One Mile Gallery, Kingston, New York. Curated by Richard Saja.
The Renegade Craft Fair, in the Prime 8 Art League booth, Chicago, Illinois.
2015
The Creature Show, at Don Drumm Studios, Akron, Ohio. Curated by Toni Billick.
The Renegade Craft Fair, in the Prime 8 Art League booth, Chicago, Illinois.
2014
3rd Annual Prime 8 Art League Event, at the Chop Shop, Chicago, Illinois.
Happy Together: A Wedding Exhibition, at the Cultural Arts Center, Columbus, Ohio.
Curated by Adam Brouillette and Meghan Kwast.
Drawings, at the Bexley Public Library, Bexley, Ohio.
Impact-Influence, a CCAD CE faculty exhibition at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Columbus, Ohio.
2013
RAW Cincinnati presents: Elevation, at Bogart's, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Explorers, at the Explorers Club Restaurant, Columbus, Ohio.
2012
Art for Life 2012 Auction for the AIDS Resource Center Ohio, hosted by the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio.
From A Different Flock, at the Ohio Art League Gallery, Columbus, Ohio. Curated by Paul Richmond.
2009
New Narratives: Paintings by Ohio Artists, at the Ohio Arts Council Riffe Gallery, Columbus, Ohio.
Curated by Dominique H. Vasseur, European Curator at the Columbus Museum of Art.
2008
I Could Swear I Saw a Light, at the Ohio Art League Gallery, Columbus, Ohio. Curated by Jeff Sims.
2007
Drawings, in a business space in the Short North gallery district, Columbus, Ohio.
2006
Brian Williams & Paul Richmond: Recent Works, Worthington Municipal Building, Worthington, Ohio.
Curated by Catherine Sheridan, Worthington Arts Council.
Participated in staff art exhibition, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio.
2005
Emerging Artists: A Collection, Legend Gallery, Zanesville, Ohio. Curated by Linda Regula.
2004
The Dreaming: Works by Katy Schepers and Brian Williams, in a business space in the Short North gallery district, Columbus, Ohio.
The Ohio Art League Fall Juried Exhibition, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio.
2003
Oneiric, Senior Thesis Exhibition, Canzani Center Gallery, The Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, Ohio.
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Freelance illustration work
I'm represented by Illozoo, the illustration agency. For editorial, advertising & book illustration projects, contact Illozoo at www.illozoo.com.
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