Grant Williams artwork on display at arts center

Star Beacon

July 16, 2008 06:47 pm

— ASHTABULA — The Ashtabula Arts Center's gallery is displaying “50 Years with Grant Williams” through July 29.
Williams spent two years as an elementary art teacher, one year as a middle school art teacher and 30 years as a high school art teacher in Palm Beach County Schools in Florida. He also taught many years as art teacher in adult education. He taught in private art galleries, at Palm Beach Community College and Palm Beach Atlantic University. He has taught a variety of courses including art appreciation, basic design, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, ceramics, sculpture, crafts, airbrush, illustration, commercial art, calligraphy and weaving.
Williams' style has evolved since his early years at Cleveland Institute of Art and Kent State University. While working on his masters at Florida Atlantic University, he was required to produce a series of paintings. His work at that time was in abstract, scalloped shapes of color against a black background and silhouetted groups of people, completed with a paint knife. His scalloped paint knife shapes continued to evolve into a semi-abstract impressionist style through the 70s and 80s. He showed a brief interest in hard edge painting in the late 70's.
Subject matter in his work has also changed with local and world events and new travel experiences. A trip to Europe in 1983 inspired several paintings and prints depicting Venice, Rome and the Austrian and the Italian countryside. A road trip to California inspired the beginning of a series of vast landscapes of canyons and colorful local events such as Native American festivals and Mardi Gras. A trip to the Dalmatian Islands of Croatia inspired an ethnic phase with evidence of old world struggles in a series of paintings and prints of bomb scarred but tranquil architecture and scenery. His most recent works were inspired by a trip on a dive boat and a trip to the Colorado Rockies.
Williams’ working media include sketches, paintings and printmaking, etchings and silkscreens. He has participated in a number of art shows in galleries, municipalities and outdoor shows in the past.
Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m to 8 p.m., Fridays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays 9 a.m. to noon. The gallery is also open before all theatre performances and during intermission. Admission to the gallery is free.

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