Will Ursprung to speak on Artist Residency in Ireland

Will Ursprung will discuss his recent artist residency at the Burren College of Art, Newtown Castle, Ballyvaughan, County Clare, Ireland. He will also be showing some of his new work.

Pottstown Area Artists Guild is sponsoring this talk. It will be held on Tuesday, March 21 from 7 to 9 p.m.in the Boyer Gallery at the Hill School Center for the Arts at Beech and Sheridan Streets in Pottstown, PA. This event is free and open to the public.

Will writes, “My oeuvre of late is primarily concerned with a reverence for the found object, and the intuitive, and often random properties of collage elements. By combining disparate parts, textures, both visual and tactile, one can create an interesting an exciting composition that evokes an emotional response. The collage idiom can be likened to the improvisation of jazz, and may make a statement about our disposable society. Sources of inspiration for me besides the object itself, have been Primitive art, Celtic, Norse and Native American myth.”

Will Ursprung earned his degree in Art Education from Mercyhurst University in 1976 where he had the opportunity to study with Ernest Mauthe, Daniel Burke, and Sister Angelica Cummings. He also studied at the University of Arts in Philadelphia and at the Barnes Foundation. He thirty-five year career was as an Art Therapist. He worked twenty of those years at the Graterford Prison working with the inmates to rehabilitate their lives and survive the prison experience.

Information about joining the Pottstown Area Artist Guild and its other events is on their website at <www.paag.info>.