MFA University of South Carolina
BFA Auburn University |
Billy Renkl grew up in Birmingham, AL, and attended Auburn University and the University of South Carolina. He has taught illustration and drawing at APSU for 28 years. Renkl’s collage work features fragments of old texts and illustrations, exploring the relationship that art has to visual communication in general, as well as the qualities inherent in paper ephemera. Renkl’s work has been featured in many solo and group exhibitions, including solo shows at The Cumberland Gallery, Nashville; Taylor Bercier Fine Arts, New Orleans; The University of Kentucky; The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art at Auburn University; and the Galerie Neue Raume, Berlin, Germany. He has done collage illustration for clients including Vanderbilt University, Southwest Airlines, How Magazine, The University of Vermont, Klutz, Inc., Strategy and Business, and The Southern Humanities Review. |
Sometimes I have an idea for a piece first, and often that comes from something I'm reading. I then start hunting through my studio for the right fragments to give that idea form. Often, though, I'm struck by how lovely or strange or moving a particular scrap of paper is, and it will suggest a direction for a new work.
Utopiaville is made from hundreds of American postcards from the 1920s through the 1950s. I love the way these postcards so thoroughly fail at what they set out to do. Even when the caption is specific – “The Hotel Richmond, Augusta, Georgia” – I suspect that the image has little to do with reality. The nation described in these cards (no other country made postcards that look like this) is purely fictional – clean and bright and airbrushed to perfection. While we struggled with a World War, and segregation, and an economic depression that gave way to absurdly conspicuous consumption, these cards continued to describe America as almost perfect – well, as a superficial mock-up of an almost perfect place to visit.
Utopiaville is made from hundreds of American postcards from the 1920s through the 1950s. I love the way these postcards so thoroughly fail at what they set out to do. Even when the caption is specific – “The Hotel Richmond, Augusta, Georgia” – I suspect that the image has little to do with reality. The nation described in these cards (no other country made postcards that look like this) is purely fictional – clean and bright and airbrushed to perfection. While we struggled with a World War, and segregation, and an economic depression that gave way to absurdly conspicuous consumption, these cards continued to describe America as almost perfect – well, as a superficial mock-up of an almost perfect place to visit.