Transformation
One man’s trash is another man’s large-scale, three-dimensional artwork.
In 2012, Jason Willaford started transforming discarded vinyl billboards into works that mixed sculptural elements and painting. At first the Dallas-based artist, who had long been an encaustic painter, was directly inspired by the messaging of the billboards to make figurative objects, such as a Sam’s Club billboard reimagined as a school of fish. Now his art is more gestural and abstract, engaging with the material and texture of the shiny vinyl, and he adds details like stitching or web-like tears to create three dimensional collages that hang off walls or stand on their own. Willaford recently exhibited some of these new works at Galleri Urbane, a Dallas space he co-founded with his wife, Ree Willaford. From July 4 to July 13, a large-scale outdoor billboard installation by Willaford will be on view at the Green Box Arts Festival in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, with the former colossal advertisements reborn as layered collisions of color and form.