Visiting Muskingum University Professor of Art William Accorsi is exhibiting three-dimensional sculptures titled “Expression of Life” on campus through April 20. The pieces are displayed in the Roberta A. Smith Library.
Accorsi graduated from Muskingum in 1954, already on his artistic journey.
He credits his start as an artist to a Vincent van Gogh painting he stumbled across at an art museum. He was a sophomore at Muskingum College at the time of this discovery and said this was his first visit to an art museum.
The reason Accorsi attended college was to play football and obtain a teaching certificate so he could both teach and coach, but by the time he graduated Accorsi was already making commissions off of his work.
“Halfway through school I suddenly became interested in art,” said Accorsi.
Accorsi, in his early days of drawing, used to walk around campus and begin drawing anything he observed. He bought supplies and began his journey because he “wanted to do art as vividly as Vincent van Gogh.”
Despite his spending time learning about art in the library, Accorsi said he “didn’t want to learn to be an artist, [instead he] just wanted to be an artist.”
He quit playing football and running track when he came to realization he “wanted to pursue art as much as possible,” said Accorsi.
By his senior year, Accorsi formed a habit, he spent his days student teaching at an elementary school and his evenings painting portraits of his friends in his bedroom in his boarding house.
His first commission came from one of those portraits and totaled to be $15. In this portrait, Accorsi admits he couldn’t paint the hand quite the way he wanted it to be, so instead Accorsi painted the hand inside of his friend’s pocket.
Accorsi’s work may have changed since his undergraduate days at Muskingum, but his feelings on it have hardly strayed.
“I let it [ the artwork] be whatever they see it to be,” said Accorsi. “I wrote that back in 1978 and I still feel it deeply today.”
Admission to the gallery in the Roberta A. Smith Library and is free and open to the general public.
Along with the exhibition of his work, Accorsi is also teaching art classes on campus during this spring semester as well as making visits to local schools giving presentations to elementary students.
