Bill Radawec's Portfolio Statement

Statement

What is Real?

Febraury 2008

By Nadine Dalton Speidel

What is real? A trite way to define reality is by negation – computer communications, plastic surgery,

and posters of famous artworks are not real. Radawec chooses to define reality by connections. He has

been given the blessing of dyslexia, which allows him a unique perspective, and synapses are at rapid

fire when Radewec is at work making those connections. Where many of us think in a linear fashion, a

person with dyslexia bounces from point to point and creates a more holistic understanding for himself.

Each of his pieces has a personal connection, a historical connection, and a universal connection. As he

makes sense of his world by forging these connections from point to point in his art, he helps the viewer

to also participate in the web of the personal, historic, and universal. A patch of grass…. a soul patch….

the music of interior life….reality; standing on a patch of grass looking up at the clear blue sky….Flight

93 flying overhead….humanity….bitter reality; connections move inward and outward to encompass

and attach us all. When looking at his body of work, the flow of these connections is evident. A sense of

reaching out to connect to nature, for example, is present in earlier works, such as his series of wooden

birds. These birds find themselves trapped and preserved in a series of events not unlike an

archaeopteryx, seemingly the connection between the Messozoic Era and own Cenozoic Era. Birds are

our connection to the past and harbingers of what is to come. Remember the canary in the coal mine, or

Noah's dove who found a home in an olive tree. His Walking Sticks also invite us to explore our

connections to this earth. Inspired by the presentation of a gift to the late Pope John Paul II, a gift of

tennis shoes and a walking stick, Radawec muses on the need for support in rough terrain, the walking

stick insect which uses its camouflage to secure its existence in nature, and the behavior of hikers who

adorn their own walking sticks with talismans from successful hikes through natural environments. Who

would present the Pope with a walking stick and tennis shoes? What kind of a gift is this? And, why

would people who experienced the reality of the breadth and depth of the natural environment bring

back a small piece of it attached to their walking stick? How do we work through our own conceptions of

what is real and what is fake, and why do we need to own a part of "it", be it an attachment to a stick

or an insect caught in amber? What are the connections here? A fracture occurs when an earthquake hits

his then California home. With that earthquake, nature came inside. In a very personal way, and in a

very painterly way, Radawec worked with the inspiration he was given. Line by line, and layer by layer,

he re-created the fractured walls of his home, re-living the break in his domicile, the break with the past.

The Color Chips series is an extension of this concept. In addition to the concept of fracture, Radawec

refers to the series of cracks as an intellectual exercise which allowed him to investigate the reasons

people would want to "own" a part of history. To him, this is 'fake'. His Color Chips series is a logical

extension of this investigation. Precipitated by a romantic break-up he experienced, he was then forced

to experience a break, or fracture, from an emotional, not intellectual platform. And, one thing we are

certain of is that emotions are real... they "color" everything we do. They color who we are. However,

Radawec is just as intrigued with the names of the Dunn Edwards brand paints as he is with the colors

themselves. What is closer to Aristotle's definition of comedy than a medium blue paint chip called

'Watergate'? In bringing to life Aristotle's definition of comedy, it throws into the light something

ridiculous or painful, but in such a way that it does not cause excess distress to the audience, but rather

induces laughter while provoking thought. This, also, is what Radawec is doing with his art. If we work

up a time-line for Radawec's art, we find that the Birds series occurs around 1992, Walking Sticks series

from approximately 1998-2000, the Earthquake cracks series spans 1997-1999, and the Color Chips

series is born in 1999. Another break is evident to observers at the year 2000 on this time-line. No

works are presented for a few years. Some might guess that it has something to do with the millennium.

Others who know him, know that he experiences another bigger break at this point, namely the death of

his father. An important connection is lost to the artist, and time is needed to recover, and to frame new

connections. Radawec moved back to Parma, Ohio, to help his aging mother and aunts. He revisits these

familial connections and makes new connections in his daily life. His actions do not go unnoticed. A

conversation overheard in the local library consists of an elderly woman greeting Bill and commenting to

others within ear-shot as to what a fine and nice man he is. She may not know about his art, but she has

seen him helping his family, connecting to the community, and this is real to her. Radawec artistically

emerges from the experience of his father's death with the series, In The Basement, recollecting time spent

subterraneanly in a space imbued with the physical touch of his father, and Review: A Study, the series

employing HO figures to recreate odd, yet perhaps real, events. In The Basement re-works the events of

a flood in Radawec's familial home. More nature coming indoors to remind Bill of what is fake and what

is real. Although precious mementos of younger life are destroyed by the flooding, the kinship and

affinity with his father, in spite of death, is brought to a place of understanding for him. Generativity, as

defined by psychologist Erik Erikson, becomes an important aspect of the work. It is almost a sideline,

those small figures in their small boxes. The series, all titled Review: A Study, seems to be another

attempt to employ comedy to understand something, but at a distance, since the connection is too

threatening up close. We peer into these small worlds, with all of the occurrences contained therein, and

the scenes make us laugh. But, when we realize that these scenes must be what we ourselves look like to

someone peering down at us, that these scenes are connections to current events, to personal events, to

historical events, we begin to become a little unsettled…. and we start to think. With a special nod to

Barnett Newman, and continuing his connection to other Color Field painters like Jack Bush, the Out of

the Blue series culminates on a grand scale, the ideas of loss, death, and what is truly real. Flight 93,

part of the most devastating event in recent United States history, flew over Parma, Ohio, on a clear

beautiful day. Radawec takes his personal connections to the subject matter, seeing the plane and the

experience of death, pays homage to the historic theme, and reminds us of the universality of it all. The

humor, used by the artist to dilute strong subjects, is respectfully absent, and the power of the works is

more focused. Out of the Blue is his most cogent series to date. Currently, Radawec is working on a

series utilizing the themes of Frank Lloyd Wright and Lincoln Logs. In a contemplation on what is real

and what is fake, he pushes the envelope to find kinship between items and explore associations and

reciprocities therein. With a meditative aspect similar to Rothko’s big blocks of color, an eye for detail

like Da Vinci, and a sense for matching along the lines of Carrot Top, Radawec is currently finding a

nexus in the signatures, or forgeries, of the main players within the theme. If we envision the old Mann’s

Chinese Theatre, where celebrities come in all of their glorious fakeness, to physically touch the wet

cement of the new sidewalks and imprint the environment in a very real and personal way with their

signatures and handprints, we get close to the visceral qualities of connection that are playing out in this

series. Amid constructions of Lincoln Logs, signatures of Wright and of those not-Wright will be

presented, saturated in color for us to contemplate. Real? Most definitely not. We all have a unique

signature that defines us, and a copy is not quite the same. But as Radawec sifts, measures, and weighs,

through creation of block prints of the signatures, we are invited to contemplate something real,

something fake, something almost too personal, very historic, and decidedly universal.

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