BIO
Corey J. Willis is an American artist who currently resides in the Deep South. His wife Sohee and their young daughter Yuni live there too with him. He teaches in Foundation Studies at the preeminent college for Art and Design in Savannah. Hailing from Philadelphia, Willis graduated from Chestnut Hill Academy. He then attended Tufts University, which is just outside of Boston. During this time he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and in Art and Design colleges at the University of New South Wales and the University of Western Australia.
Willis received his MFA degree in Visual Art from Academy of Art University in San Francisco. He is a former participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Professor Willis has an MS degree in Education from Bank Street College of Education with Parsons School of Design in the Leadership in the Arts program.
While in NYC, Willis was awarded the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. He traveled to Reykjavik and Greenland with the fellowship as part in the SIM: Icelandic Association for Visual Artists residency. He was a resident both during the summer and winter seasons. Corey has also participated in the ChaNorth Residency program in upstate New York sponsored by the Durst Foundation.
STATEMENT
It was Saturday night and the dreaded Hee Haw was the only thing on TV. Kornfield Kounty? Who were these people? And why couldn’t they just put on the Incredible Hulk or Wonderwoman? Then the door bell rang. Nobody used our doorbell. I mean nobody…
The three of us screamed. My parents were out doing who knows what and the dogs barked incessantly. Being too short to see through the peephole, I cracked the door. A portly man was standing on our porch. He asked if he could use our phone.
He was disheveled and peppered in blood. The man dabbed his hairline with a rag as red liquid streamed down his face. He had been in a car accident on the freeway behind our house. I pointed to our beige push-button phone next to the TV. Nice to have grown-up before cellphones.
In public school I was passed over for enrichment classes. Maybe it was because of all the protest drawings I made on the sides of my papers. My underhanded approach to comment on the quality of instruction was not well received…
Like my mum, I became a teacher. She always brought us to her college and high school classes. I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of school culture and instruction. One of my schools had dark grey spots all over the spanking new blue carpets. It was one of those newfangled Art and Design startups using (DBL) Design as a Basis for Learning. The high school was having some student issues (faculty issues actually) before I arrived. The kind of issues where the school is shut down and they have to re-imagine their opening. The tour guide on my visit let me know the students kick gum in the carpet as a visual protest.
After Philly, I moved to New York City to continue this work. I liked educating at these new high schools for Art and Design. They were like FAME, minus the subject interest and portfolio. How to design a four-year program in Design for students who had no stated interest in Art and Design, but potentially could… That was my mission.
It was great to see talents and institutions from all-over Manhattan and beyond support the cause. Run-DMC, the Guerrilla Girls, Kori Newkirk, Tim Gun, The New Museum, The Museum of Arts and Design, The Center for Architecture (to name a few) all came out. With the requisite support, approach and opportunity the school was a special place.
I had my own opportunities and fiduciary support about this same time. With the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship I traveled to Iceland. I studied American culture in Reykjavik as part of SIM: The Icelandic Association of Visual Artists residency. I wanted to see firsthand the effects of American consumerism and capitalism where I knew they abhorred it. And I wanted to see global warming at work in the Arctic. The experience did not disappoint.
The disdain for Americans in Reykjavik was palpable, especially New Yorkers… despite the need (fishing and fiscal collapses) for the tourism dollars. My favorite piece of island graffiti said, Brooklyn Fuckwits Beware… You are in Asymetrical Haircut Heaven Now!
This is what I wanted to experience in both polar seasons. The extended time was important to understand the apparent contradictions; like the serving up of whale burgers on Icelandic menus or the shooting of a polar bear when it finished its exhaustive swim to Icelandic soil. Hotdogs with mustard sauce and a candy bar side with a can of coke after swimming outside in the snow? Fakelored souvenir sweaters that originated in other countries?
The most informative of part of my experiences was when I went to see the calving of glaciers in eastern Greenland. Sure, global warming was evident… but the Inuit guide asked if I was there because my grandfather was a soldier? I had no idea what he was talking about as we zipped past icebergs in the open sea. Frozen to the little boat I regretted leaving my winter coat in NYC.
Seeing the 10,000 discarded fuel-filled barrels and the military machinery abandoned from the American WWII airfield base Bluei East 2 shocked me. Rusting after 70 years, this toxic mess became a pissing contest on who should clean it up. No wonder Icelanders and Greenlanders feel the way they do about Americans… used, abandoned and dismissed.
Sometimes you learn more about yourself and your country from others. This is the kind of introspection I try to create in my work. I like to examine the residue of social engineering in the divided state of America. I try to connect past sociopolitical events to present applications in my work. My pieces are like souvenirs from our partisan political theater. Complete with surface and substance defects, their inexactness allows for multiple interpretations. I see this ambiguity as the foundation of the bubblegum logic that drives the consumption of our division.
Working now at the collegiate level and experiencing the Deep South for the first time, Kornfield Kounty is my current stage set. I now get why Hee Haw was on TV on Saturday night and I still don’t like it.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who control the present controls the past.
George Orwell 1984
Testify by Rage Against the Machine
