Bill Barminski Totally Explained

Everything about Bill Barminski totally explained

Bill Barminski (b. 26 November 1962) is an American artist and filmmaker born in Chicago, Illinois.

Life and Art

Barminski moved with his family to Fort Worth, Texas, while still very young and it was there that he spent most of his formative years.
While attending the The University of Texas at Austin as an art major, he was a contributor of satirical cartoons to the student newspaper, The Daily Texan . The cartoon strip, entitled "King of the Pre-Fab", featured Dick Nixon, a used car salesman and campus gadfly. Despite repeated efforts by the student's association to have him removed, Barminski went on to create the underground comicbook, "Tex Hitler, Fascist Gun in the West"

. Author and cultural critic, Greil Marcus mentions this character in Artforum: "What's most remarkable about Bill Barminski's "Fascist Gun in the West" is how quickly and completely it pulls you into its twisted, yet utterly familiar little world".
After dropping out of art school in 1985, Barminski moved to Los Angeles where he continued to produce his hand-bound comic books. He began in earnest to paint. His first show in 1986 in a downtown L.A. gallery, Oranges/Sardines

, created a minor sensation and resulted in modest sales.
His work caught the eye of record producer, Scott Arundale, who commissioned him to create the album cover for an Industrial/Tribal band, "Death Ride '69"

. The image of Elvis Presley as Jesus Christ was later acknowledged and reprinted in the Greil Marcus book, Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991), about the phenomenon of the Rock 'n' Roll icon in the years since his death.
The themes and style of his work critique mass media and consumer culture. His exhibitions usually contain installation elements showcasing a video work produced for each show. His richly textured paintings have been reviewed in numerous publications such as FlashArt, Art in America, Art News, Visions Art Quarterly, New American Paintings

, and the L.A. Weekly.

Tobey Crockett describes his work in a 1996 article for Art in America : "The advertising-derived images that Barminski incorporates into his paintings are meant to evoke postwar America. Like filmmaker David Lynch and others, Barminski is interested in the ominously surreal side of the good life."
Bill Barminski's paintings are prominently featured in the movie Horseplayer (1990). The film stars Brad Dourif as a homicidal artist living in downtown L.A. and Barminski makes a cameo appearance. His paintings have adorned the walls of several feature films including Sliver (1993) and Zero Effect (1998) as well as the TV show, Friends.
In 1996, he designed the album art for the School of Fish recording, Human Cannonball

.
In 1998, Barminski is credited with designing the largest and most expensive billboard

ever commissioned by Absolut Vodka which remained on the Sunset strip for over two years.

Music Video

In 1999, Baz Luhrmann hired Barminski to create a music video, entitled "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen): The Sunscreen Song (Class of '99)" based on Mary Schmich's newspaper column, Wear Sunscreen . The spoken word piece is set to music by Luhrmann and features animation and home movies of Barminski and his family. The video

aired on all major networks in the U.S. and was featured on the The Tonight Show, The Today Show and The View as well as VH1 and MTV. It also appeared in the UK, Australia and Japan. The Goo Goo Dolls commissioned him the following year to create a video to be presented on stage as part of their 2000 summer concert tour. Entitled "Greed in Action", the four minute piece features stock footage and original flash animations by the artist including American vintage automobiles being dropped from B-52 Stratofortress bombers.
Barminski worked with director Peter Howitt and Oscar-winning editor Zach Staenberg to created multiple video sequences for the feature film Antitrust (2001), starring Tim Robbins and loosely based on the real-life creator

of a major software conglomerate.
In 2001, H&M of Sweden commissioned him to create a music video to present to its corporate staff entitled "Add Your Note"

. H&M has more than 1400 stores

in 28 different countries with more than 60,000 employees.
Barminski joined forces with Christopher Louie in 2007, to create a fictional film director named Walter Robot

. The very same robot stars in his own award winning video

for the band Modest Mouse called Missed the Boat.

Digital Media

Bill Barminski is an accomplished Flash, Shockwave and After Effects designer with his many musical and digital art compositions available on his website

. Macromedia frequently awarded him "Flash Site of the Day"

during the late 1990's as he constantly tinkered with and updated his on-line works.
Barminski is author and co-creator of "The Encyclopedia of Clamps", an interactive CD-ROM game featuring an amusement park of games and social and political commentary. It was awarded first prize for Best Foreign Package at the Tokyo MultiMedia Grand Prix

in 1997.
During the same year, Barminski created the original character Cyclops Boy

, featured in the internet series "Cyclops Boy: The One-Eyed Detective in Satellite Sky". It won Best Multimedia Award at the FilmWinter Fest, Stuttgart Germany.
In 2006, Barminski created a video

for Mortified, the spoken word project ripped from the pages of real life. Mortified is a comic excavation of adolescent artifacts (journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more) as shared by their original authors before total strangers. The innovative video has been hailed as a breakthrough in guerilla web marketing.

Education

Since 1998, Bill Barminski has taught digital art and design at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

Further Information

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