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| April 2008 |
| Billie Silvey |
| Interview with a Sculptor |
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| Q. When did you begin sculpting? What led you to it? A. As a youngster, I enjoyed carving and working with my hands whether it was helping my dad with building houses or whittling wooden toys. I always planned to be an artist. The summer after I was converted to Christ, I attended a small church in Happy, Texas. There the preacher implanted the idea in me that I had to either “preach or perish,” so I decided to become a minister. But that wasn’t to be, since my natural inclinations were still in art. While finishing a master’s degree in missions at Harding Graduate School, I sought relief from the theology classes by taking a drawing course at the University of Memphis. One day I stumbled into a sculpture class that was being taught in the basement. After a few minutes of watching the students, I was mesmerized. The art form just looked like fun. I left that day and reported to my wife that “I don’t know what it is called exactly, but I have found what I need to be doing . . . making art statues.” This was my first exposure to sculpture. It was a good choice, but I did finish writing my thesis, though my heart was not in it. After I received my missions degree, I started over in art back at Harding. Q. What is your favorite medium and why? A. During my career, I have enjoyed working with almost all sculpture media including bronze, steel, plastics, wood and stone. However, I gravitated more towards carving (wood and stone). Maybe it is the result of working with my carpenter father when I was young. Q. What is your favorite subject? A. Much of my work has been non-objective (no object in mind, just form) or abstract. There was a period in my earlier work where I developed a reputation for realistic carvings and castings using the female form. My later work dealt with “Seed,” “Birth” or “Mother-and-Child” abstract series. Q. Where and how did you train? A. I received a B.A. in art from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas, then an MFA from the University of Mississippi. My D.A. is from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the teaching of the third dimension. Research and practice have been the best teacher. Q. Where can your work be seen? A. My sculpture is located in over 25 states, Canada and Mexico. Most is in private collections. I have no record of their exact locations nor photos of most of them except for what is in my three books on sculpture. Hurricane Katrina destroyed my records as well as most of the sculpture I personally owned. Several of my large steel sculptures (over 10,000 lbs.) are located on Long Island and Rochester, NY; Dallas and Galveston, TX; Salt Lake City; West Palm Beach and San Francisco. |
| Arthur Williams with one of only five sculptures that escaped damage in Katrina, a carved walnut titled "Mother with Child." |
Q. How has your work been recognized? A. Early in my career I won over 17 sculpture awards (mostly 1st place or Best-in-Show) within a five-year period. After I exhibited in a one-person show at the Abilene Fine Arts Museum, eight galleries in several states began to carry my work. There were one-person exhibits in San Antonio, Seattle, Chicago and Santa Fe, where I had the Shidoni Gallery’s first one-person show. Q. Where have you taught? A. I began teaching at Oklahoma Christian University, went on to Abilene Christian University in Texas, ending with William Carey College on the Coast in Gulfport, Mississippi. I was artist-in-residence at William Carey and held the endowed Gillespie chair, eventually becoming chairman of the art department. The hurricane literally destroyed the college campus, so I retired at the end of that school year. Q. What books have you written? A. Davis Publications in Worcester, Massachusetts, asked me to write a textbook on sculpture in l985. Published in l987, Sculpture: Technique-Form-Content became the most popular college textbook on the subject. It was revised in 1995, and a teacher handbook added to make it more suitable for high school use. It has gone through several printings. A new secondary textbook, Beginning Sculpture, was published by Davis in 2005. It is the most widely adopted high school text on sculpture in the U.S. A third book, The Sculpture Reference, came out just before the hurricane in 2005. Q. Is there a relationship between sculpting and your faith? A. Sculpting has always been a way of using the talent that God gave me. Arthur Williams lives with his wife Jacqueline LaJune Thayer Williams in Springfield, Tennessee. They met at York College and finished their undergraduate degrees at Harding. A music major, Jacqueline receiving her master’s in elementary education from the University of Memphis, specializing in teaching multi-handicapped children. They have two sons and two grandchildren. |
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| "Birth" by Arthur Williams is on the campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. |