Department of Art presents Paul Villinski in Visiting Artist/Scholar Lecture Series

Feb. 28, 2007-- Artist Paul Villinski will present a public lecture on Wednesday, March 7, at 7 p.m., in  the Fine  Arts Recital Hall at Arkansas State University. Villinski is one of four artists featured in “New and Used,” an exhibition of contemporary art opening at the Bradbury Gallery on Thursday, March 8, in a public reception from 5 p.m.-7 p.m.

Paul Villinski was born in York, Maine, and has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Massachusetts College of Art, and earned a BFA with honors from Cooper Union. His work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions, including recent shows at the Islip Art Museum, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Wyoming Art Museum, and Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

As a pilot of sailplanes and paragliders, Villinski creates art imbued with metaphors of flight as a central theme. About his approach, the artist says, “A diminutive kite hangs on a wall in my studio. Found several years ago at Coney, it’s an economical piece of work, fabricated from humble, cast-off materials. A simple parafoil design, its sail was carefully torn from a light-weight brown paper bag, its tail an old sock ripped into strips and knotted end-to-end, its kite string a few yards of cotton thread. Barely recognizable as a kite at first, it took to the air readily and bobbed along behind us the length of the boardwalk. It flew well, but its origins set it apart, made it a real thing of wonder: someone had painstakingly, lovingly, taught a littered paper sack, an old sock, and a length of thread to fly.” Villinski’s creations often involve found objects—beer cans, discarded work gloves, crack vials—that he transforms into objects of wonder and beauty—like the beer can butterflies featured in the group exhibition, “New and Used,” at the Bradbury Gallery through April 15.

Villinski’s lecture is presented by the Bradbury Gallery, with assistance from the Department of Art's Visiting Artist/Scholar Lecture Series. Both the lecture and the exhibition are free and open to the public.  Additional information may be obtained by contacting the Bradbury Gallery at (870) 972-2567 or the Department of Art at (870) 972-3050.

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