By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
In fifth grade, Willis Bing Davis’ teacher asked him and his classmates to stand up and announce what they wanted to be.
The others had the answers one would expect, Davis recalled. Doctor, teacher, beautician and the like.
Those in the class probably had certain expectations about what Davis would say. He had a reputation as an athlete, especially on the basketball court.
When his turn came, he pronounced his career goal: He wanted to be an artist. There was quiet, afterward, he recalls. Then a few titters. He was undeterred, and at recess he told those who dared giggle that he didn’t want to play with them anymore. “I cut them.”
Davis, a renowned artist from Dayton, visited BGSU Friday for the opening of 20/20 Exhibition of Davis’ own work plus a selection from his collection of African art and his contemporary African-American artists. The exhibit continues in the Bryan Gallery in the School of Art through Sept. 20.
Davis, 87, did indeed go on to be an artist. He attended DePauw University in Indiana where he starred on the basketball team. After his junior year, people asked if he would leave to join the NBA.
He didn’t. He wanted “that paper,” his diploma, he said.
Davis returned to Dayton where he launched a teaching career in public schools, community centers, and colleges, including 20 years on the faculty of Central State.
As a teacher, Davis said, he would often shape his assignments around teachers that he would explore in his own work.
He treasures his upbringing in Dayton where the neighborhood was full of love and adults who didn’t shy away from correcting a miscreant and then bring them home for more discipline.
Davis’s mother raised six children on her own. When his father left, some well-meaning people told her to put them in an orphanage so another man would “come to court” her. She responded: “I’ll do it myself.”
And she did, not remarrying until they were all grown.
She advised Davis to “reach high and reach back and help somebody else.”
Davis’s work was shaped by African-American and African culture.
His series “Ancestral Spirit Dance” started in 1973, and he now has about 640 of the oil pastel on black paper drawings. They are inspired by the designs of Ghanaian Kente cloth and the polyrhythms and improvisation of jazz.
He explained that he carefully lays the grounding of carefully executed geometric figures, often triangles, before added a flurry of abstract strokes. That’s the jazz musician soloing.
His work is often informed by current issues. Davis said that when he discovered Picasso’s painting “Guernica” that depicts Fascist bombing of a Spanish village, and later saw drawings of concentration camps, he understood that art was about more than painting landscapes.
The BGSU show includes No. 15 in the “Colin Kaepernick/George Floyd Knee Cushion” series. (The first in the series was presented in the exhibit “Visible Man: Art and Black Male Subjectivity” at BGSU in October, 2021.)
The piece is set on the floor, such that the viewer must kneel to fully appreciate it.
The exhibit also includes several of Davis’ “Urban Masks” series that reflect on urban conditions by using found material such as scrap metal, broken glass, and wire to create sculptural forms inspired by traditional African masks.
School of Art Director Charles Kanwischer said that the artist has been seeking a venue for this particular show that brings together his recent work with selections from his private collection.
“I’m nourished by this experience,” Davs said of the exhibit.
This is the fourth exhibit at BGSU featuring his work. He noted that his work appeared in the first exhibit to showcase Ohio Black artists in the 1960s.
“Art has been my saving grace,” he said.
While he has retired from teaching, he and his wife, Audrey, operate the EonNia Gallery in Dayton and he continues to create art.
Davis told the audience at BGSU that he has a piece in progress and that “energized” by the opening. He was looking forward to returning to Dayton to get back to work.
