Aleph Contemporary

Willard Boepple - Exhibition Catalogue

Willard Boepple (b. 1945, Vermont, USA). Willard showed an early interest in painting, studying in the 1960s at Skowhegan School of Painting, the University of California at Berkeley and Rhode Island School of Design. Richard Diebenkorn was a family friend and neighbour in Vermont who encouraged young Willard’s facility with paint. Willard’s use of colour is instinctual, visible in his sculpture and later in his career, print making.

After art school, Willard took a job as an assistant to a sculptor. Sculpture was invigorating to Willard, providing new materials in which to express his interests and thoughts. In 1970 he came to London to meet his artistic heroes, sculptors who, as part of the ‘New Generation’, were re-defining what sculpture was, and what it could be. Willard’s sculptural career flourished. He has exhibited internationally and his work is in institutional collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Storm King Art Centre (just outside New York) and The Fitz William Museum in Cambridge.

He was also chairman of the Triangle Artists’ Workshop for twenty years, an artist residency programme. In 2003, Willard met master print maker Kip Gresham and began making his first prints. In our interview Willard discusses this continuing collaboration with Kip, and how the prints relate to his sculptural ideas. He also explains the process and technique, explaining how each of the monoprints in this exhibition are unique works of art. When one knows that these monoprints are made by the abstract sculptor Willard Boepple, it becomes clear that they are an extension of his three dimensional work. Inspired by his sculptures in coloured resin playing with transparency through the stacking of elements, these unique prints though flat are very much the work of a sculptor.

In the folding back and forth with layering and rotating, each print is a succession of planes. “I’m an abstract artist and I want my work to speak directly without narrative or message other than that which is created by the artwork’s own form and presence. I hope for my sculpture and prints to work via the abstract relations between their parts, like music. Abstract art’s privilege is to be driven purely by the visual experience of it and by that to reach through the eye into the mind and when it is good, straight on into the heart.” Since 2004, Boepple has collaborated with master printer Kip Gresham, at Cambridge, England. Despite high resolution images, seeing these prints online falls short of their breathtaking splendour and colour when displayed on a wall.

Watch Willard Boepple talking about his life’s work to curator Jo Baring: