Collage Artist Brings Works to Mineola Library

Bare just the day before, the white walls of the Walter and Joan Hobbs Gallery on the lower floor of the , were covered this past Saturday with the vibrant work of local artist Ken Williams.

A Mineola resident, Williams culled about 30 pieces of art completed over the past eight months from his collection for display during the library’s month-long exhibition.

“This is the first time I’m actually showing in about 10 years,” Williams said last Saturday during a reception for the public. “A lot of this was just a build up of materials, like trying to find the right materials for this idea, for this show.”

Though this is the first time displaying his work in Mineola, Williams is no stranger to the art world.

Entirely self-taught, Williams has worked as an illustrator, muralist, animator and art handler at museums. He has also participated in several shows in the city where a group of artists rent a space to display their creations. Williams said he was inspired by seeing the works of Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock up close during his time as an art handler.

“This was really an attempt to exercise all the demons, all the artists that influenced me from Hans Hoffman to Jackson Pollock to Robert Rauschenberg most definitely, just burn through all of them,” he said. “Just to take what they had and really make it mine, you know, bring it to another step.”

During the two hour reception, Williams took the visitors down the line of art, explaining how each group came to exist and the meanings behind the various collections he created, all of which was done in collages.

“The idea for me comes from the Dadaist, and that is that everything is art. Every object is art and everything can be turned into a work of art,” Williams said, explaining that the work is “random generated” and “found object.”

The images used in the set were created using online search engines by typing in random words and thoughts and seeing what images appeared in the results.

“It’s really not about the images, it’s about the composition” Williams said. “I just try to make everything as chaotic and random as possible.”

Among the different series he created was the “hockey fight series,” which was a collage of photos that included pictures of hockey fights, starlets, flowers and bad movies, and the “Hong Kong Garden,” which featured images of Zen and nature.

Williams has been working on his art for many years. Diana Williams, his wife, has noticed the effort and is happy to see others are beginning to take notice as well.

“I’m very proud of the work he’s put into this,” Williams’ wife Diana said of his rising notoriety. “He puts in a lot of time after he comes home from work.”

“” will be on display at the Mineola Library until June 30.