WALTER KING

> “I make art. I’ve been doing it since I was in grade school…since the middle 60’s…since I can remember. My mother says it became an issue when she found me with a butter knife spreading a stick of butter all over her new sofa when I was just able to walk. It starts when I wake in the morning. It continues through the night. When I was young I spent my passion learning how to manipulate various media. I had all these images in my head and I couldn’t get them out. As I learned to draw and paint and work in other forms the images began to flow. I’ve been at this now for the majority of my life. This exhibition covers the last 40 years from about the time I began to grasp the means to express myself. Of course I’ve continued to learn and practice my art since that time when I covered my mom’s sofa in butter. “
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> Walter King
> Midwest Dialog
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> August 23 - September 24
> Reception Sept. 2
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> Fort Hayes Shot Tower Gallery
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> This exhibition will cover 40 years including painting, drawing,
> printmaking, sculpture, artists books, poetry, illustration, design,
> photography and experimental video.
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> Bio:
> Walter King’s art education began seriously when his mother taught him to graph up a photo of JFK in the 5th grade. That drawing was exhibited at the Eisenhower Elementary School art and science fair…seen by a local curator and exhibited again in an exhibition of amateur artists in the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton OK. He sold both the sketch and the original work. Walter’s family moved to Tulsa where he went to high school. They opened an arts and crafts store and frame shop in the fall of 1970 the year he graduated high school. In 1972 he had his first solo exhibition at the Power Plant, a large nightclub on the south side of Tulsa where he met musicians like JJ Cale and Jim Byfield both songwriters for Eric Clapton. In 1976 he began his studies at the Columbus College of Art and Design. He studied Graphic Design majoring in Illustration with a strong emphasis in drawing and painting. He worked his way through his art school education as a graphic artist doing both production and design. He was Art Director for a small agency on the west side of Columbus called B..A. Graphics, later called Pro-Marketing and was the graphic artist for Saint Anthony Hospital design office.
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> Walter continued his painting studies for a semester on a teaching fellowship at Wichita State University. He worked for two years in Tulsa for Striegle Advertising Graphics highlighted by designs for a 12 part PBS series called Profiles in American Art. In 1983 he began his graduate studies at Boston University receiving his MFA in painting in 1985. During his final year at BU he was invited to be one of some 200+ American artists to design a peace poster for the 40th commemoration of the bombing of Hiroshima.
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> Walter began teaching at his alma mater in 1985 and has been there ever since. His students have gone on to national prominence. He has continued his passion for painting and other media exhibiting around the country including exhibitions in the South Bend Regional Museum of Art, the Beverly Art Center(Chicago), in Europe at the Magyar Academy of Art in Budapest and the Kulturrathaus in Dresden and in South America at the Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires. His design and illustration has been published by Oprah Magazine, Journal of the CG Jung Society of NYC, the AIGA and the American Illustration Annuals and Artisen Press. His Hiroshima Peace Poster is in the collection of the Hiroshima Museum of Art.
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> For more information contact Walter King:
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> wking@ccad.edu