BILL BITES:
BEING PRIVATE AND PUBLIC

Issue #14, by Bill Russell

This is the first of two columns about the ICON4 Illustration Conference that runs July 6-9 in our own San Francisco. How fortunate we are to be able to host 500 of the world’s illustrators at such an event as this and to engage in a public discussion about the issues illustrators face today. To be frank, this event wouldn’t work without two crucial contributions: the optimism and hospitality that exists in Northern California and the energy and community activism of the Northern California Chapter of the Graphic Artists Guild.

Present and former members of our chapter are steering the event. They have mobilized volunteers, enlisted speakers, and donated their time. Longtime member Bud Peen, Co-Chair of Programming and Events, says, “I feel that the Bay area is a vibrant center of some of the best illustrators and creatives in the world. Previous conferences have been organized around an East Coast-centric mindset. This is the first time we are able to show the world not only the talent but also the generous community we have built here. ICON4 is designed to inspire, motivate, educate and empower. The fact that it's being held in San Francisco is no accident. This is where it's all happening.”

Generally peer events like ICON4 and others such as the HOW Conference and Flash Forwardare opportunities for graphic artists to be “drawn out of themselves”. They are invitations for us to venture beyond our studio … learn practical knowledge, have social interactions, and hear inspired messages. It’s something we can’t learn, have, or hear alone. We have to juggle our work and personal lives. It would be like being able to draw both a portrait and a self-portrait or writing for a newspaper and in your diary with equal ease. We make time to create, and we promote what we create. Graphic artists must strike a balance between our public and private personas. Both are indispensable and necessary for our own and common good.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “One key, one solution to the mysteries of the human condition, one solution to the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride alternately on the horses of his private and public nature, as the equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the other.”

I for one will be throwing myself into ICON4. I’m bringing my public self. Stay tuned for a wrap up of the event in your next edition of BillBites.

Comments, etc. to Bill@Billustration.com

BILL RUSSELL

A Guild member for 18 years, Bill has been a freelance illustrator for over 25 years in Toronto, New York and the Bay Area. He taught illustration at California College of the Arts (formerly CCAC) for eight years and been a staff artist at the San Francisco Chronicle for five years. His contributions to various Guild efforts include volunteering on the North Bay Luncheon Committee, a successful North Bay Sales Tax event, the Image and Outreach Committee, and the Repeal of the California Sales Tax on artwork. Bill also writes press releases for the Guild and is one of the original All-Rights Refusniks.
To view his work and other musings, visit www.Billustration.com.