Becoming an Artist
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Willis "Bing" Davis knew he wanted to be an artist when he was 5 years old.
Although Willis "Bing" Davis had been pegged to be his community's next great athlete, he was five years old when he knew he wanted to be an artist. People laughed, but he never gave up hope and he never stopped working toward his dream.
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Willis "Bing" Davis: Reach High & Reach Back is presented by your local public television station.
Becoming an Artist
Clip | 2m 2sVideo has Closed Captions
Although Willis "Bing" Davis had been pegged to be his community's next great athlete, he was five years old when he knew he wanted to be an artist. People laughed, but he never gave up hope and he never stopped working toward his dream.
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- My decision as to when I was an artist is one of the most difficult question I could try to answer because I have always been making things.
Now, consciously, I remember the fifth grade class when the teacher told us to stand up and say what we wanna be when we grow up, and I remember making that statement to my class with sweat running down my sides 'cause I was gonna have to tell my posse, my friends, my running partners, what I really wanted to be, and that was an artist.
And then I stand up and said, "Teacher, I wanna be an artist when I grow up."
I got what I expected, the sneers and the snicker and the laughter from some of my closest friends, but it's always been there.
What I realized early on is that when I was making things, either in a structured class or by myself or on the back porch, on the front porch in the yard, at the community center, in the basement of the church, I was happy, and I decided I wanted to be happy, so I knew it had to be somehow connected to art.
I didn't know how or what, but it was one of the driving forces that stayed with me.
So I've been making art for as long as I can remember, making things and expressing myself, and I was fortunate enough to grew up in an environment that nurtured it, and this was an environment that had already identified me as the next athletic star to come out of the neighborhood, but I played athletics, but people didn't know except those that would ask me, "I wanna be an artist when I grew up," that I had enough commitment to say, and it's been with me.
That was the fifth grade, but I was making things before the..
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Clip | 1m 44s | It can be nerve-wracking to share your work. (1m 44s)
Reach High & Reach Back Preview
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Preview | 1m | Few people have impacted the arts in Southwest Ohio quite like Willis “Bing” Davis. (1m)
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Clip | 1m 32s | What if you've been told you're not artistic enough to be an artist? (1m 32s)
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Clip | 1m 26s | Pigeonholing art into a 9 to 5 schedule doesn't always work. (1m 26s)
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Clip | 1m 17s | Finding your flow is personal, but it's an important part of creating art. (1m 17s)
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Clip | 5m | It's easy to get stuck when you're working creatively, but how do you get into the flow? (5m)
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Clip | 4m 7s | Using found objects can be a way of expanding one's appreciation of life and art. (4m 7s)
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Clip | 2m 11s | Art can be a great tool for expression. (2m 11s)
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Clip | 7m 25s | There are many ways to work with clay and, in some ways, it's a microcosm for our society. (7m 25s)
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Clip | 1m 2s | Being a professional artist isn't all about the art. (1m 2s)
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Clip | 2m 2s | Willis "Bing" Davis knew he wanted to be an artist when he was 5 years old. (2m 2s)
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Clip | 1m 50s | Visual Arts, Dance, Drama, Writing, Spoken Word... they all work together. (1m 50s)
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Clip | 1m 7s | The arts often spur shared experiences, which can open doors between people. (1m 7s)
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Clip | 1m 52s | Art isn't a universal language, but it can be used to understand other cultures. (1m 52s)
Adornment & Understanding Others
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Clip | 4m 5s | Willis "Bing" Davis creates wearable art, mostly from found objects. (4m 5s)
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Willis "Bing" Davis: Reach High & Reach Back is presented by your local public television station.