Bill O'Donnell

(b.1952; resides Chicago, IL)

Corn Shack, 2006

Beach, 2005

Night, 2005

The miniature houses in these pictures are my allegories for parcels of received wisdom. The symbolism is not particular (a white house is not purity of spirit) but rooted in the general sense of a home as haven from the unforgiving elements. – Bill O’Donnell

Dream houses in the surreal sense of the word, Bill O’Donnell’s series Elevations arranges model houses in the varied landscapes of woods, fields, and coast, frequently along the metaphorically loaded terrain of paths and roads. A shallow depth of field fosters varying degrees of illusion among the pictures, just as the representation of home and home ranges from a model pared down to a single monochromatic mass to replicas detailed right down to missing shingles and bent window screens. The title of the series emphasizes the position of these diminutive domiciles which are so convincingly sited with reference to ground and horizon yet suspended and unrooted to the surrounding land. Many of the houses in these pictures are obviously held up by a human hand, not cradled in the palm so much as balanced on the fingers, inverting the usual scale of house and inhabitant. While the reversal destabilizes the structure’s traditional role of providing shelter and security, it fosters a different sense of security in perhaps suggesting that the sense of home is something one can control and even carry with them.

O’Donnell is an Assistant Professor of photography at Illinois State University, where he has been awarded two College of Fine Arts University Research Grants in recent years. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago conferred an MFA in photography on him in 1986, and an OX-BOW residency in 2005. His work is held in the collections of the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship Archive at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Illinois State Museum, Springfield; Central Washington University, Ellensburg; and Seattle Arts Commission Portable Works Collection.

– Kendra Greene

http://www.billodonnellphotography.com/

PAST PORTFOLIO

Interiors: Archway, 2003

Interiors: Ceiling, 2004

Interiors: Corner, 2003

This work is a meditation on domesticity, mortality and the eternal tension between real and ideal. - Bill O’Donnell

In the Interiors series, Bill O’Donnell continues with an allegory he began to treat in his previous Home series, namely that life is a journey that eventually leads to home. While the pictures of familiar but inaccessible model houses in Home were careful to keep the viewer at a distance, the pictures of Interiors bring the viewer right inside. The spartanly furnished rooms suggest vacancy, and the odd color of light which illuminates them signals something unusual, perhaps even unsettling at work. Taken metaphorically, the walls, doors, hallways, ceilings, and floors have the symbolic weight of passages, beginnings, and endings. Sharp angles in some photographs emphasize space and depth, creating a distance to be traveled, while the flat walls or tight corners of other photographs suggest a dead end.

- Kendra Greene

PAST PORTFOLIO

Prairie, 2001

Bag, 2002

Furrows, 2001

In the Home series, Bill O’Donnell explores the allegory of life as a journey that eventually leads to home. Since the end of journey equates with the end of life, death’s mystery and anxiety haunt these pictures, even as glowing windows invoke home’s promise of comfort. A very limited depth of field reveals only the smallest strip of sharpness in these pictures, a visual representation of the sliver of time that separates past and future, where we are and the hazy impression of where we are going. The houses themselves have the clean lines and uncomplicated shapes of models, each standing alone in a nearly empty field or on a barren hill, both idyllic and isolated. The resulting small, square, black-and-white photographs are stunning in their simplicity and as beautiful as they are eerie.

- Kendra Greene