b. Lexington, KY 1970
Los Angeles-based Brian Wills makes multimedia works that bridge painting and wall sculpture. Wills creates his works by wrapping colored thread around thin strips of wood, which he then encases in paint and polyurethane and mounts on the wall. His process has a labor intensity that the artist associates with craftsmanship. While his compositions are frequently geometric and patterned, the simultaneously glossy and textured surface of these works is meant to reflect light differently depending on the position of the viewer. Wills has more recently begun to create freestanding sculpture using a similar process.