VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The G Gallery in the Heights presents the exhibition Bill FitzGibbons: Fire Drawings, on view December 4 through December 26.  Opening reception, Saturday, December 4, from 6pm to 8pm.

The artist writes: The Fire Drawing series is a direct result of a collaborative project titled Filament with Creighton Michael. The drawing process that I chose for the video component of Filament was an oxy-acetylene torch used to burn the surface of primed birch board. The choice of fire as a drawing medium was made not only for it’s characteristics of light, but also in reference to my earlier pyrotechnic performances from the early nineties. Various sources and uses of light as a sculptural medium have been an ongoing aspect of my sculptural vocabulary.

The resulting Fire Drawings in this exhibition primarily have an aggressive vortex approach to their manifestation. These circuitous compositions contain evidence of their creation with wisps of smoke imbedded onto the surface, often rising off of the picture plane. The compositions of the drawings suggest possible cosmological and/or biological aspects through exploring flat space with fire as the medium.

FILAMENT, an interaction between light and line, combines the sequenced light simulations of Bill FitzGibbons with Creighton Michael’s dimensional drawing to create an environment, in which the viewer encounters the tangible nature and sensual pleasure of drawing. By employing, as the primary light source, a collaged video loop of both artists captured in various marking activities,

FILAMENT fuses the viewer’s participation in real time with the artists’ historical marking segments. As in their previous collaboration, EELight 2006, FitzGibbons and Michael continue to weave the ethereal with the material transforming the gallery’s visible envelop into multiple layers of shifting space inhabited not only by the physical remnants of drawing activity but also the apparitions of past action. Unlike EELight, where the viewer was simply allowed a vicarious experience observing a fantastic theater of light and objects through a glass barrier, FILAMENT encourages the viewer to physically explore through time, space and sound, the episodic process of drawing.

Bill FitzGibbons received a BFA in sculpture and art history from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and an MFA in sculpture and multi-media from Washington University in St. Louis. FitzGibbons has received over thirty public art commissions, spanning a distinguished career as an international sculptor and public artist. His work has appeared in venues such as The Lab Gallery, New York City, New York, and the San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas. Recent commissions include site-specific light installations in Reykjavic, Iceland, and Seattle, Washington.

FitzGibbons was named as the first curator at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, Missouri, and has since served terms as the Director of Sculpture at the Visual Ar t Center in Anchorage, Alaska, and as the Department Head of Sculpture at the San Antonio Art Institute.

Among his honors, FitzGibbons was selected for a Fulbright Scholarship to the Hungarian Art Academy in Budapest, Hungary, and a USIA artist fellowship in Helsinki, Finland.

FitzGibbons is the Executive Director of the Blue Star Contemporary Art Center, San Antonio, TX, and serves on the board of directors of the International Sculpture Center.