Artful Billboards

Perhaps you have noticed, over the past several months a small billboard here or there (on Charles Street or Allens Avenue or Valley Street to be specific) that was not trying to sell you something. That was instead trying to engage you, to get you thinking about art and talking about art. Not just while visiting an art gallery or a museum, but while driving or walking through the city’s streets. If so, then Artboards RI, a year-long project launched last October with the installation of three original works by three local artists on billboards in Providence’s urban neighborhoods, has been successful. Stay tuned. In late January, three additional works by three different artists were installed on three more billboards in Providence. These will remain in place into late April.

Providence artist Bob Dilworth’s Backyard can be seen at 382 Broad Street (billboard sponsored by Cornish Associates). Bob says the work symbolizes many of the informal backyard gatherings at his parents’ home in Virginia – casual and fun events. “My work is about memories of lives and relationships of family and friends, something I think many can relate to,” he says. “And because the billboards are out in the open I thought this painting would best represent those memories. My hope is that, when seen, people will think of their fondest times with family and friends.”

Bob earned a BFA from RISD and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a professor and past Department Chair (Department of Art and Art History) at URI, and has taught at Princeton, Brown and Columbia College in Chicago. Bob is the Gallery Coordinator for the Main Art Gallery at URI. More about his work can be found at his website.

Artist Ida Schmulowitz’s View From Behind Vartan Gregorian School/Autumn can be seen on Dean Street at Westminster Street (billboard sponsored by the Providence Tourism Council). Ida chose this work for the Artboards project because, she says, “I thought it would read well as a board, graphically, and read well from a distance.” She hopes that people will keep going back to look at all of the art, again and again, over the time it is on display.

Ida, who lives and works in Fox Point, is known for her large-scale paintings of urban landscapes – particularly for her series of works painted from one vantage point on the India Point pedestrian bridge, where something as small as shifting light or as big as changes in the landscape itself “are the catalysts for creating a new series.” Ida earned a BFA from RISD. Her work has been exhibited throughout Rhode Island, in Sag Harbor, New York, Santa Barbara, California and in galleries in Ohio and New Hampshire, among others. More information can be found at her website.

Artist Cesare De Credico’s work, which remains untitled, can be seen at 845 Potters Avenue (billboard sponsored by Marc Greenfield, Esquire). The piece is the first drawing in a series Cesare intends to do, of images that appear on his television screen during storms, when weather is interfering with the satellite feed. “In the last few years, I have been thinking a lot about the culture we live in today, about how we are constantly surrounded by images – on our iPhones, on 24-hour news chan- nels, in advertisements that are all around us. We live in a very chaotic world. As a visual person, how do I live with that chaos, and sort through it? The drawing is my way of breaking it down, using my own vocabulary – of colors and marks – as a poet would use words.”

Cesare earned a BFA from RISD in 2005. He exhibited his work in a one-man show in Stuttgart, Germany that year and since then in shows throughout the Providence area, and he is currently with the Freight & Volume Gallery in the Chelsea area of New York City. Cesare notes the irony of having his work on a billboard. “My work has now become part of the chaos.”

At the time of the writing of this article, the three previous works remain on display, at 384 Valley Street, 221 Allens Avenue and 800 Charles Street. You can become part of the conversation on Twitter (#ArtboardsRI). Other major Artboards RI sponsors are RISD, AS220 and Lamar Signs.