Bill Vielehr
{Photo Gallery}

About the Artist:

Form, color, line, composition, and texture. Tactile and visual. Balance and formal visual art concepts. These are the basis of my three-dimensional drawings that act as the vehicle for me to physically express my interests. The medium is the real message. Freestanding walls or wall treatments have all the classic art elements - and - an environmental key: reflection.

My sculptures are drawings in wax cast into aluminum or bronze. The negative line is created by pressing the sharp end of a steel tool into the wax. The resultant graphic quality is inherent to the process. Textured areas are built up with slowly hardening wax using a palette knife on a wax sheet, similar to texturing an oil painting. Each section of the sculptures is cast, fabricated, and welded. This process produces irregular surfaces which reflect the color and light from their surroundings, creating a continuously changing visual pattern which is attractive and exciting. This positive enhancement of the sculptures by the environment includes passersby and the different moods of the four seasons.

My early sculptures were an attempt to use the human figure as a pure visual form. I would start with the whole figure and then fragment it into single sections of the anatomy, thereby using the human form in a totally realistic way to present it in an abstracted, out-of-context, manner. I was deliberately trying to unemotionalize the viewing of the human form. In the 70s, I began to pursue my current interest, which is to somehow make the human form relative to large-scale contemporary sculpture, and to relate the human form to its environment.

I continue to relate the human form as a positive element in contemporary sculpture, and a complementary form to the environment. Our world and relationships to each other are rooted somewhere in our separation from the natural. We don't look like our environment, and we don't seem to fit into it without destroying it. My work tries to bring the figure literally and physically into the landscape, as an attempt to relate the human form to our world... to directly humanize physically large contemporary sculpture.

In doing a series of figurative 'manscapes', I began to focus on written communication. Letters and numbers are used as texture, as symbols of drawing, the purest form of communication. The human-created letters and numbers represent only themselves, just as the sculptures represent only themselves (pure communication). The writing in the wax becomes hieroglyphic, pictographic, or petroglyphic - pure timeless forms of communication. Often silhouettes or castings of humans, sometimes in the negative form, are drawn, cut, or fade in and out of the work. The walls of canyons, textures of rock, plants, and earth are created in the patterns, and mingle with the interspersed abstracted human forms.

The work I am involved with at this point is people friendly and inviting, usually free-standing walls or wall works, full of sculptural elements and sometimes incorporating seating. The sculptures are designed to draw people to them - to walk around and touch them delighting each viewer with the variety of texture, color, form, and discovery of theme. My work is very tactile and intensely visual because of the use of lines and texture contrasting with the highly polished surfaces.

Many site specific works seem to be caught in time, to be particular to the present. I prefer to pursue a timeless quality in my work, a breach of culture, time, and technique that transcends the immediacy. The perception of now can appear shallow, and the depth of tomorrow and yesterday can be emphasized. I attempt to use contemporary and historic effects together to make the work timeless and ageless - prompting us to relate forward and backward simultaneously.

Selected Public Commissions and Collections:

City of Fort Collins, Gardens at Spring Creek, Public Art Commission, Sculptural Walls with seating, 10' x 6' x 4' Fort Collins, CO, 2002
Pike's Peak College, Public Art Commission, Sculptural Walls, direct purchase 6.5' x 4' x 1', Colorado Springs, CO, 2001
City of Flagstaff, Public Art Commission, Sculptural Walls, 11' x 10' x 4', Flagstaff, AZ, 1998
Colorado School of Mines, Coolbaugh Hall, 6 Wall Reliefs, 24" x 30" x 4" (3 bronze, 3 aluminum), drawings based on formulas and symbols from chemical research, Golden, CO, 1998
Boulder County Courthouse, Monument to Mining, Boulder Miner's Association, life-sized bronze miner, Boulder, CO, 1997
Boulder Public Library, Children's Garden, Boulder, CO, 1991
City of Littleton Historic Museum, Littleton, CO, 1990
Boulder/Dushanbe Exchange Collection, Dushanbe, USSR, 1988
City of Boulder, Boulder Reservoir, Boulder, CO, 1986
Digital Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO, 1986
Prudential Bache, Park Place, Boulder, CO, 1983
Cherry Creek Plaza, Denver, CO, 1983
Macerich of California for Crossroads Mall, Boulder, CO, 1983
Embarcadero Square, San Francisco, CA, 1972

Selected Relevant Experience:

Instructor, Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design, Sculpture Department, 2001, 2002
Featured speaker on public art, CPRA Annual Conference, Vail, 1995
Director of Form Sculpture Contemporary Sculpture, 1981 - present
Arts Commission Presents, FORM, INC., KDVR Public TV, 1989
Featured Artist, Boulder Art Scene, DKVR Public TV, 1988
Curator and Coordinator, Sculpture in the Park, Boulder, CO, 1979-86, 1988
Discussion on Public Art, KGNU Public Radio, Boulder, 1986, 1987
Guest Lecturer, AIA Convention, San Francisco, CA, 1985
Curator and Coordinator, Annual Vail Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit, Vail, CO, 1979-1982

Awards and Prizes:

2001 Grant for Sculpture, Arts Commission, City of Boulder, CO
2000 Best of Show, Firehouse 3D Show, Longmont, CO
2000 Lou Wille Award for Excellence, Art On The Corner, Grand Junction, CO
1998 Grant for Sculpture, Arts Commission, City of Boulder, CO
1998 Grant for Sculpture, AHAB Addison Grant, Boulder, CO
1988 Grant for Sculpture in the Park, #9, City of Boulder, CO
1985 Grant for Sculpture in the Park, #7, City of Boulder, CO
1981 Grant for Completion of Sculpture, City of Boulder, CO
1974 Colorado Designer Craftsmen Exhibit Purchase Award

Formal Education:

Post Graduate work, Special Studies of Sculpture, CO State University,1969
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Colorado State University, 1969