A Fascination with Fairies. (Excerpt)

Master of Mud (aka artist) and former Center for Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit, professor of art, Bill (William J.) Girard Jr., passed away in 2011. The website created to honor him is found at https://girardsvasari.com/

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Preface

There once was a gent named Girard

Whose masterworks dazzled and charmed.

His art ignited such lust

It made the lustiest combust.
They just burned, unconcerned and bought more Girards.

Unnoticed by blame, undiscovered by fame

(Girard lived, after all, out of sight in Detroit)

His pieces still set art mavens aflame.

Made of earth brushed with mirth, they laugh at life’s plights.

Hey! Don’t like my damned poem? Go write your own.

Sweet Bill was unique. You might say eccentric.
He loved his craft, loved to teach and proved quite prolific.

Sure, to some his marvels appear enigmatic.

But those they ensnare say that his work is magnetic.
All the same, if the past is our present, Girard proved prophetic!

Bill lived a life as rich as rich gets.

Pots of love, blazing art, lots of friends, lots of pets!

He built and he filled a museum of joy.

Have a look. Take your time. What’s not to enjoy?

Updated 2-03-21

Introduction:

The following is an excerpt from a prose poem for performance, tentatively titled, A Fascination with Fairies. The first half of that prose poem is now available on this blog via the preceding link.

This portion opens page 8 of the current 20 page draft. I just happen to like it, best.

Ariel and Robin Goodfellow are borrowed from Shakespeare's, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream, respectively. They are docents for a special exhibit of Girard's work, being held in Fairlyland.

Robin (Goodfellow):

Ariel, you lovely sprite. What good luck brings you to us?

Ariel:

I met your Bill or Will Girard in his mother’s womb. Though he’s moved on, he thrills me still. His potential was such a gorgeous, complex whole, I nudged him toward my favorite role.

Robin knows how this is done. I simply shaded his precocity with griefs worthy of his gifts.

So, if it’s OK, I’d like to help you share our friend with his temporal kin.

Robin (Goodfellow):

Oh, do. Please do. Do share. Don’t hesitate.

Ariel:

Girard grew as artists do: abuse at home to make him tough. A despoiled target of vindictive love. Just tIme enough to close the fault beneath proud flesh. Repeated doses to keep it fresh.

Girard grew as artists do: Inquisitive, industrious and bright. Damaged by crimes without redress. Wounds that burn to speak. A tongue that can’t confess.

Girard grew as great artists must. A warrior for reasons he couldn’t possibly explain. Servant of a voice that only he could hear. A medic out to aid the injured of the war to say what can’t be said.

Neither sulfa nor penicillin heal silent wounds. So Girard applied tourniquets of art.

Birth of the Minotaur. Oil. @ 5' x 5' Artist: William Girard. 1940 - 2011. Royal Oak, MI.

Girard borrowed freely, reaching far and further, from every culture, every time and every place.

Imagine, if you can: A thousand splendid tales wait in line for an audition. Glorious dramatizations of mortals’ sad, masochistic preoccupations.

There a noose of noire. Here a boiling cup of Neptune’s tea. Then one, pure fun, a wing-strippingly hilarious death at sea.

Look at them. Legends, lore, gore and woe. All in line, heel to toe. Unperfumed. Undraped. Unashamed. Lusty, bold and sly as sin.

Utterly delighted to meet you. Happy to betray and cheat you. Occasionally, to breed with you. Excited by the chance to eat you. Thrilled to rip your limbs apart and make them something new.

Look at them! They’re alligators. Dressed in skins like yours. Waiting patiently in that long, long line to perform for Girard’s imagination.

The prettiest, the wittiest, most subtle, most profound—get the nod to take the stage. Aflame, aflutter, a little shudder—a chance to re-engage!

To strut, to pose, display some chest, wag some butt - but all of it in mime. Another chance at immortality—expressed in color, mass and line.

With every piece, Girard realigned the visual trajectory of fresh.

His pace was neither swift nor rash. His memory for images was nearly photographic. Though his clothes were shabby, and his beard unruly, his character was kind and sympathetic. Not unsurprisingly, he was often short of cash.

Some seeds wait centuries for the conditions they need to swell.

Is it any wonder Girard built his masterworks to last?

He contrived immaculate conceptions. He made them to survive. Seeds of insight, expressed as art. Seeds as populated as Noah’s ark. Seeds as cunningly depicted responses to the darkest, longest nights.

Seeds of mastered passions. Seeds as negentropic quarks. Seeds of origami intuition.

Center Panel. Sacred Triptych. Oil on Plaster of Paris. Tooled clay with inset jewels. 17" x 24". Artist: Bill Girard. Royal Oak, MI. 1940-2011

Seeds as silent stories, able to sustain abeyance. Seeds of glory, prepared for burial in bland. Seeds of summons, seeds of paradox—invisible to minds that navigate in flocks.

And, god willing, if somehow, if somewhere, in some temperate place, rediscovered, and welcomed, seeds whose substance might still thrive.

Robin (Goodfellow):

He made himself a tool for art. He was an utter fool for art. He became a school for art. He sinned for art and, like Prometheus, he paid in blood and bile for art. He lived and died and lived for art. There was no Girard apart from art.

He faced critics as if stoic, though his work exudes much humor and great joy.

Ariel:

In the bountiful years that Girard spilled art, his finest work looked worse and worse. Like Cassandra, whose prophecy could not be heard, Girard’s intent could not be seen.

In his heyday, the culturally preferred approach to paint was poured or splashed. Sometimes slashed. Rough. Harsh. Rude. Offensive.

Next in line, proponents of austere design. Affect-free. Photo-realistic. Pristine. Unframed shapes with suggestive names. Leftovers on cold museum floors. Pity the janitor who put them in the trash.

In that time, in that place, when ‘color wars’ meant rage in Black and White; when ‘cold war' stood in for peace; when ‘baaad’ was fine and good wholly insufficient; to the art-wise, Girard’s images, collected from castoff cultures, reimagined in the present tense, were perceived as ugly or regressive.

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Excerpted from a developing prose poem for performance: A Fascination with Fairies.

To learn more about the marvelous artist that inspired such fervor, peruse my previous blog post, Girard? Girard Who?

Other Posts

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Master of Mud (aka artist) and former Center for Creative Studies (CCS), Detroit, professor of art, Bill (William J.) Girard Jr., passed away in 2011. The website created to honor him is at https://girardsvasari.com/

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