Girard, Art & Detroit: Snapshots of the Big Picture

  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/ ------------------------------------------------------- If  you wonder where this is going, think about one of the most famous pieces of sculpture in the western world:  Michelangelo's sculpture,  David .  Actually, that's misleading. That's just where it starts. Maybe. Maybe it starts with Genesis 2:7. “Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life…”  Loosely translated, this passage is a recipe for terra cotta: Take clay and make something so amazing that it takes on a life of its own. It's a tremendous challenge. Point is, everyone knows about that  David . So if you're a certain type of artist Ambitious Interested in tackling one of the more popular themes in art and biblical hist

  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/ ------------------------------------------------------- Bummer, man. Just a real bummer. At the beginning of 1981, California conservative and former actor, Ronald Reagan, had assumed the presidency of the country. Around mid-year, the dread disease that would come to be known as AIDS was first identified in the US. And just before Christmas, our hero, artist and professor of art, Bill Girard, was forced to remove two of his paintings from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) Power Center exhibit in which he was one of the three featured artists.  One of the two paintings was MARS. The other was JUDY IN THE STARS. Article : WOE TO ‘MARS’ AND ‘JUDY IN THE STARS’  Hand dated: 12-13-1981 By Jeff  Mortimer News Staff Reporter Ann Arbor News What happened?  Well, th

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/ ------------------------------------------------------- Previously unreported Girard painting hits art market - and sells! RIMA, signed and dated Girard 1995, recently turned up in an online search courtesy of 1stDibs.com . Her past is a mystery. (RIMA doesn't seem to have been part of the Allen Abramson estate collection.) But her current status looks good as a happy Girard collector has reported reeling her in!   According to the the website: In "Rima" Girard has captured a beautiful red-headed female in a dreamy pose of closed-eyed contemplation. The figure appears to be completely self-absorbed without being closed-off to interior monologue and the decorative element about her head suggests the intensity of those thoughts. The green vine that drap