transforming fear | innovating vision

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                                                                                                                                         © 2007 - 2012">2007 - 2012 Noelle Lorraine Williams

VISIONARY | Willie Cole | 11|2007

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VISIONARY is a monthly online interview project that profiles individuals who are using culture to urgently, innovatively
and daringly re-imagine how we live this existence. Through engaging each artist’s greatest visions and deepest fears
it seeks to sustain, document, share and ultimately transform how we live and feel about community as individuals
internationally.

OFFERING is a section of VISIONARY that profiles art that is shared outside traditional gallery and museum settings. 
It seeks to document exciting and innovative work that artists and others have decided to share within free mass culture
locations including television, internet and public street spaces.

VISIONARY is a REBORN project.
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VISIT VISIONARY MAIN PAGE

                                                                                                                               

Outside Visionary One of the aspects of Willie Cole that is significant is the multiplicity of visions and experiences that he incorporates in his work. Reconstructing what was once abandoned into something never expressed before; incorporating women’s vernacular into his work though he is not, he truly moves multiple experiences from the outside to the inside and back. This year Mr. Cole participated in a conference on public art that the Newark Arts Council in conjunction with the City of Newark and the Newark Museum hosted.   Mr. Cole who has been in numerous international public art venues, continues to work with grassroots organizations is represented by Alexander Bonin Gallery www.alexanderandbonin.com.

  

    Willie Cole, The Elegba Principle, 1997

WILLIE COLE | OUTSIDE CULTURES INTERVIEW  "My vision for Public art is that it engage people in an active way  for generations to come.  That it be representative of the community and cultures that inhabit the area around it." - Willie Cole (This interview was conducted in August 2007.) Noelle Lorraine Williams: What do you wish to stimulate when you (re) represent communal history, memory and objects?  Do you feel urgency in your need to work and produce? Willie Cole: My goal usually is to compress time, that means to make the past, present, and future discernible at a glance.  Of course some people will see this quickly while other will see it only over time.  Urgency?  No.  There's the typical artist' need to create because that's what I do.  It's like breathing and I therefore can only go a short time without doing it in some form or another.  Noelle Lorraine Williams: What are the most significant contributions of public and outside art in assisting people in understanding and orienting themselves in this world?  In what ways do you feel that non institutional public art acts? "My goals in public art are the same as my goals in all my work; to bridge the time gaps between past, present and future; to make something that will resonate in the viewers mind and eye and make them never see the world, their life, the object, the same way again." - Willie Cole Willie Cole: The most significant contribution of public art is it's contribution to artist.  It gives every artist a chance to be immortal, to last for ever, through their work.  To the public it varies depending on the work of art.   My goals in public art are the same as my goals in all my work; to bridge the time gaps between past, present and future; to make something that will resonate in the viewers mind and eye and make them never see the world, their life, the object,  the same way again. Noelle Lorraine Williams: What would be your greatest vision for public art? Willie Cole: My greatest vision for public art is a tough question.  A bit high brow.  My vision for Public art is that it engage people in an active way  for generations to come.  That it be representative of the community and cultures that inhabit the area around it. The most significant contribution of public art is its contribution to the artist.