Welcome to Feature Artist Friday, a weekly segment bringing focus on the artists, creators and makers in our community.
Continuous circles, wheels turning and the unrelenting march of time; William Cares does something truly remarkable, taking very huge, very human experiences and makes them visually vulnerability. Playing with textures and familiar shapes, he creates pieces that are deeply emotional and create an instantaneous connection with it’s viewer. Read on to find out William’s inspirations, processes and a few life lessons. You can find William’s work on his Instagram @willcaresart and Email: careswa2@gmail.com
He will also be at Ann Arbor Art Center for their Holiday Market December 8th 10-8 pm and December 9th 12-6 pm.
In my recent work I am exploring new methods and new materials. These artworks focus on process and often cross the boundary between painting and sculpture. The main “subject” of these works is the dialectic of seeming opposites. Some of these oppositions include 2D/3D, white/black (with all that those words convey about opposition and race as well), clockwise/counterclockwise, life/death, Western linear time / Eastern cyclical time, and future-focused / present focused.
In my Circle Series I have used this most “perfect” shape as a symbol for existence itself. I have loaded a flat stick with paint and attached the stick to the painting by means of a metal pin. The stick is then moved in a counterclockwise direction to apply the paint in a wide uneven swath, much like the sweeping hand of a clock, but I move in the opposite direction. The counterclockwise motion is significant, I am going counter to the direction of Western time, thus I am “turning back the clock” as it were.
In ancient Eastern models of time (Hinduism and Buddhism) there exists the “wheel of time” or Kalachakra, which represents time as cyclical, whereas most Western cultures view time (and thus life) more like a line or arrow, beginning at the left and moving to the right. In my fifties now, I am more aware of the passage of time and of the fleeting nature of existence. My father died in the Fall of 2015 and my mother is turning 85. My two children are grown men. As a teacher of Art, I have an acute sense of the tyranny of the clock, and of the need to be “timely” and future focused, yet I also feel a strong desire to slow the passage of time, to become more present in the now. This is largely due to the influences of Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and art making itself. The past is a memory and the future merely an illusion, all we really have is now.
Recent pieces have been made from textiles purchased at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. These textiles have been altered by draping, cutting, and/ or painting and pinned to the wall without stretcher bars, thus eliminating the typical presentation of paintings. My aim is to reference other uses of textile in our everyday lives such as clothing (robes), bedspreads, window curtains and the like to create works that function both as painted sculptures or sculptural paintings but with the echo of those other aspects of the materials from which they are made. The finished works speak of the missing human body, of loss, and death, dreams, and memories.
WANT TO BE A FEATURE?! Email Marisa (marisa@riversidearts.org) and tell me a bit about you and your work! Photos always appreciated; not limited to visual art!
