Visual artist David Wilson is alive and exhibiting. That’s also what he called a collection of collages on display now at Bloomington Public Library.
Alive and Exhibiting is part of a gallery series installed on the library’s second floor, outside the renovated facility’s community rooms.
The library’s gallery wall is typically reserved for local and regional artists. Wilson lives in Nashville and is the first national artist to display work in the series. In a way he’s both an insider and an outsider, having attended graduate school at Illinois State University in the College of Art. He grew up in Lockport, went to Joliet Junior College and Columbia College Chicago before he found himself in Bloomington-Normal. His first job teaching art was at the McLean County Arts Center.
“It was 2001 when I had my last solo show at Illinois State University, which was my MFA thesis show,” Wilson said. “I figured, you know, it took about 24 years for Bloomington to get over it. So, here I am now.”
In that sense, Alive and Exhibiting is both an exhibition and a mantra. Wilson’s career has taken him to South Dakota, the Pacific Northwest, Kentucky and now Nashville. Wilson said an interview with a new platform connecting ISU art alumni and faculty called Normal Roots was a refreshing reminder of what all artists navigate when launching their careers.
“You lose that network after you graduate,” he said. “You’re literally trying to figure it out. And nobody teaches you that, really. If you don’t have your own passion going, or your own drive, your own goal, it’s going to be very tough.”
Those with the drive to carve out careers in the arts have it “less tough,” Wilson said.
“It’s going to be a challenge that you’ve set yourself up for. That is the rewarding part, because you’re going to teach yourself how to succeed."
The show itself is a playful collection of collages transposed to look like old-timey newsprint, political propaganda or movie posters.
“The materials themselves are nothing fantastic,” he said.
Wilson uses tissue paper, acrylic paint and laser printed images to create a photo montage, transfers that to a plate and prints it on paper, to get the flatness of the vintage ephemera he’s going for.
“I like that reference back to nostalgia,” he said.
Buster Keaton is one cyclical character in Wilson’s work. He gravitates toward charismatic figures whose personas are part of what made them unique.
“There’s something about the way I resonate with his sense of creativity,” he said. “In his interviews he would say, ‘In the silent film era, we wouldn’t lay out a script, we’d lay out a story.’ What’s the beginning? What’s the end? The middle will figure itself out.”
“That philosophy when I’m collaging or creating the next artwork like this, is kind of how I approach,” he said. “I want to do a piece about something political, something whimsical, about something serious. How do I want it to look? I think about the size. I think about the colors to kind of get the tones going. The placement of figures, whether they’re crowded or isolated. And then I start and the middle figures itself out.”
Then there’s Alive and Exhibiting’s setting—a white wall in a public library—which Wilson describes as “beautiful.”
“I think it’s elegant,” he said, and not just because of the well-placed lighting illuminating his work.
“You’re in a public venue that’s free,” he said. “Anybody can walk into the library. Anybody can look at your work. You can walk in from going to the grocery store, return the books, and in that brief moment, you turn around and look at the wall—you’re looking at artwork.”
Wilson said if that artwork gets viewers to pause for three seconds, that’s success.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love a formal museum, art-center type of exhibition, but there’s something about these public-facing exhibitions that are just kind of refreshing to me. You have something very unique in Bloomington, Illinois, that very few cities have.”
David Wilson's Alive and Exhibiting is on view at Bloomington Public Library through Aug. 9. Wilson will be there for a free artist’s reception from 2-4 p.m. that afternoon.
