​                                             ABOUT BILL SQUIRES

 

Q: When you exhibit your art, what are your expectations?
A:  I want people to experience the work, to engage it.  That means finding something in the sculpture, reacting, questioning, enjoying…
Q:  Where does your art come from?
A:   It is a hybrid of  many things.  There is a blacksmith in some of it, a machinist, a welder, a foundry worker.  There is a jokester, a preacher in some of it, and maybe a teacher.  Like others of my generation, I cut my teeth on modernism, particularly the formal mix and license of Cubism and Futurism.  Later, I bought into surrealism, neo-dada, cybernetics and post-modernism.  I probably read too many art books and magazines.  David Smith’s steel sculptures interested me, I could name others, but ideas and concepts particularly drove my experimentation.  I traveled a lot, saw a lot, met and learned from really dedicated artists.
Q: Where do you get your ideas?
A: I draw, read and write a lot.  I try to pay attention to what is happening around me and my part of it.  I take in as much of what I see as I can tolerate.  Today drives my art, my desire.
Q: You use found objects, odds and ends, in some of your sculptures.  What attracts you to that?
A: I find the unexpected in the commonplace.  I put things together and they become something they were not before…more than the sum of the separate parts you might say.  What I do is a little different than what a folk-art, junk sculptor might do.  The folk or visionary artist usually begins with some notion or message to get across...religious or political for instance.  Such work can be timely, but it can often seem awfully commonplace.  When I put things together, I expect the union to be more of a “chance encounter”.  When I combine things in sculpture there has to be an “Aha!” moment. Whatever happens, that’s o.k., but it is not usually the result of a conscious objective.  I just search what’s in front of me and things merge or morph into one another, and that may or may not be something new.
Q: How do you title your art? 
A: Titles come last.  My titles happen after the fact of the art.  Usually, I discover a title for a sculpture when I discover what the sculpture is about, and that hardly ever happens early in the process.  Until a work is finished it has no useful name.  When I’m through with it I give it a name. Should we name our children similarly?  Instead of legally naming an infant at birth, should we find out something about the child before we name them? Unfortunately some children might never be named at all.