LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Local artist William Duffy was awarded the Bill Fischer Award for Visual Artists in a ceremony at the Portland Museum Tuesday.
The award, presented by Louisville Visual Art and the Community Foundation of Louisville, serves to provide support in the form of grants for the exhibition of artwork and other efforts to foster a professional career and is given to artists who show a commitment to experimentation and the creative use of materials and techniques.
Duffy has been part of the fabric of Louisville’s art scene for nearly four decades, working both as a sculptor as well as a teacher, including serving as an instructor for Louisville Visual Art’s Children’s Fine Art Classes and in the Jefferson County Public Schools.
“One of the things that my folks told me growing up was, ‘Someone helped you. Don’t you forget. You reach back and you help someone else,’” Duffy said while accepting the award. “And so, I’ve been doing that now for about 40 years or so, of reaching back into schools and the community centers and what have you. There’s more of a reward doing that than it is sometimes doing my own work. But I’m getting older now and I want to get out some of the things that’s been stirring in me for a long time.”
He'll now have that chance. The Bill Fischer Award for Visual Artists comes with a $5,000 grant, which Duffy intends to use to realize a life-long dream.
“I work small because my studio is rather small, but I always had a dream of enlarging some of these works and seeing them out in public,” Duffy said. “It’s been my dream for a long time to have one, or two pieces even, in my city. The city that I grew up in.”
Duffy will be enlarging a current sculpture of his, “Nocturnal Care,” which stands 10 inches tall and depicts a father cradling a child in a posture of care and protection. He will take the original sculpture to a facility in Madison, Wis., where he will use special molding equipment to create a six-foot-tall version of the piece. Upon its return to Louisville, the enlarged “Nocturnal Care” will temporarily reside at the Kentucky Center for African American Heritage.
