Celebrating arts and culture in our community
Featured in The Springfield Beacon (December 26, 2007)
Jerry Williams: What you probably didn’t know
By Austin Berger
For the Beacon
If you’ve gone into the Springfield’s Public Library, you’ve seen his work -- a gymnast performing a handstand on a rhino while an owl lands on the gymnast’s foot. Even if you haven’t gone, you may have already heard about it.Decried by Springfield City Councilors as everything under the sun -- from an endorsement of Satanism to a social commentary about the forest industry -- Jerry William’s ‘Balancing Act’ met with much skepticism (to say the least) when it won a commission from City Hall.
While it was a victory for this 65-year-old, it also bears a mark of shame: it has eclipsed his reputable career in theater design, costume design, and ceramics that has spanned four decades. It’s frighteningly surprising to find such a well-established man laying low in the hills of Eugene, only to be remembered as the guy who made the rhino and the gymnast. So if you don’t know his story yet, here it comes.
Inspiration to begin: Jerry went to class alongside James Cromwell (the farmer from the movie ‘Babe’) and others at the Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh to study set design – a school with classes so voracious it made going to graduate school at University of Washington almost breezy. “The classes they taught in graduate school were the classes I took back there (at Carnegie Mellon).” He’s had a spectacularly respectable career since then; being published in magazines and textbooks at age 24, teaching at Rutgers, Purdue, the Alley Theatre of Houston Texas and doing set and costume pieces for over 300 productions, earning him kudos from Eugene-Springfield to Taiwan.
In 1973, a job at Villard Hall at the University of Oregon enticed him out to Oregon country. “The first time I came here, it felt like Jurassic Park- so green and wet.” says Jerry. “I was expecting to see a Tyrannosaurus jump out.” He found no dinosaurs, but he remained, teaching students for 27 years, training set designers, and also having the distinct credit for designing the sets of the Hult Center for the first 10 years.
Mentors: That which inspired Jerry came to him very early. The best term to describe it might be: instantaneous reaction. Somewhere, back in the 40’s, Jerry’s older sister Janice brought home a crayon drawing, for which she got a gold star. His response: “I can do that.” From there, the spark turned into wildfire. His mother recognized his talent early, and thus nurtured him by enrolling the young artist into a private tutorship with a puppetry class at age 12. A class he was teaching to other children by his high school years eventually developed into a local puppet show on Kansas City television.
It’s rare that one finds mentorship in a building, but to hear Jerry talking about the Rockhill Nelson Museum of Art in Kansas City, it certainly made a dent in him. “It was like the Greek Parthenon times three,” he says, fondly remembering the days where he would get led through the employee door, bypassing security cameras, like a tiny mobster in the art world.
Art and Quality of life: Jerry considers himself an advocate of the arts. “It’s been in my life ever since I could do it." He should be living it up in his retired life, but still stays busy with a new form of advocacy – The Jerry Williams Quarterly, a home-based arts magazine that can be found in 110 galleries across the state. “It’s my baby.”
When asked if it adds a quality to his life, it’s almost akin to asking, “how does food nourish you?” It simply is a given for Jerry: art nourishes life. “In stage design, you have unity, color, contrast, variety,” he says. “These components of set and stage design are also the components necessary in life…without it, all you have is a higgildy- piggildy series of accidents.”
Jerry Williams goes further to say that art is connected with the higher power. He views it as no coincidence that the amount of design in elegance with cathedrals and temples worldwide were scaled back at the advent of art galleries. "God and art are inextricably linked; ergo when you embrace art, you embrace God as well."
His legacy as an artist: “Everybody’s ego wants them to survive their own mortality,” says Jerry, comparing his work to the greats but in a way that he feels his work is not at a level worth surviving his own life. “Being in set design, it was my job to produce a spectacle on a small budget, to be practical.” But it would be no risky gamble to bet on his work, like the Greek potters and sculptors of old with their urns and bas relief found among the ruins, it will be no less memorable. It’s like Jerry says, “Ceramics are as eternal as any steel.”
You can see ‘Balancing Act’ at Springfield City Hall, and his crucifix can be seen at St. Alice’s Church on the Corner of 15th and E Street in Springfield.
For more information on Jerry Williams Quarterly, visit his website at: http://www.quarterly-online.com.
"Balancing Act" by Jerry Williams
___________________________________________________________________________About The Artist
Hometown: Independence, Missouri
Media of Choice: Ceramics (Clay)
Favorite Subjects: People
Favorite Place to do Art: At home
Arts Organizations: Emerald Art Center
Awards: Numerous awards, grants, commissions and fellowships
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