Bill Walther
Artist Statement:

The standing figure series uses the human body as a point of departure into shapes and metaphors. As elegantly as I can manage, each work is reduced to simple forms, almost all decoration and embellishment is removed -- what's left is a structure and in that structure, the form of a standing figure can be evidenced. The material for these works is steel, and its industrial nature runs through the sculpture, i.e. they are not soft and cuddly, but hard and rigid. Although a necessity at times, enabling attachment to the ground , the pedestal can be a visual distraction.

I'm somewhat transgressive to the orthodoxy of modernism, when considering the pedestal indivisibly a part of the sculptures. The "pedestals" should relate to the piece and enhance the sculpture.

Education:

1195 Western Michigan University MFA

Selected Exhibits:

1976 Michigan Youth Arts Festival / 1st Place
1982 MSU Student Show
1993 WMU Student Show / Devos Award
1993 Kalamazoo Area Show
1994 WMU Student Show/Grand Prize
1995 Muskegon Regional Show
1998 Navy Pier Maquette Exhibit
1999 Art Train Muskegon Stop Area Artists Display
2000 Muskegon Community College/Group Steel Show
2002 Navy Pier Maquette Exhibit

My sculpture uses the human body as a point of departure to explore content or ideas with simplified forms. In reducing things down to basic shapes, the balance is to give the work just enough to hold it together, without putting extra or extraneous parts on that could get in the way and clutter the composition.