{"id":2466,"date":"2011-06-01T04:55:25","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T04:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2025-11-10T17:22:41","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:22:41","slug":"jim-williams-the-beginning-of-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/jim-williams-the-beginning-of-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Jim Williams: The Beginning of Now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jim Williams among his works<\/p><\/div>\n

There are many \u201ckey moments\u201d in Jim Williams\u2019 life: his childhood discovery of a knack for remodeling his midwestern family home; his decision to study architecture with Bruce Gof, the legendary student of Frank Lloyd Wright who surpassed his teacher in flights of sheer fancy; his foray into domesticity in a former polygamist house in the Salt Lake Avenues neighborhood, where he lived with wife and children; his decision to study art and become a painter; his determination to return here in 1971, to fix up and sell his former home; the evolution of that much-modified structure into a combination atelier and gallery. In fact, aside from the acknowledgement in his paintings, drawings, sculptures, collages, and what-nots of the aesthetic trends that swirled about him in post-WWII America, perhaps the most lasting trace of Jim Williams\u2019 formative years is his commitment to the principle, often intoned with gravity in what became known as the Sixties, that today is the first day of the rest of our lives. Every moment that could be seen as the summary of ones past can, with enough vigor and joie de vivre, just as well be taken for the beginning of the future waiting to emerge from the melding of memory and imagination.<\/p>\n

Williams and his current collaborators have a phrase for it: \u201cthe beginning of now.\u201d It\u2019s also the title of their book, a labor of love and respect, including a volume of photographs by Tj Nelson and another of text by Cara Despain, both bound and slipcased together by Mary Toscano. In a sense the book came into being to formalize and make more accessible the rare personal tours that have hitherto been the only way for strangers to experience Jimmie\u2019s. A shared desire to give the book a proper start led, in turn, to the decision to extract\u2014to borrow in as intact a manner as possible\u2014a few of the more accessible, free-standing parts of the elaborately interconnected, multimedia composition and self-portrait that his house has become, and create from them an installation that will be on view at the Westgate Lofts in June. The exhibition will foster the book, which in turn introduces the house.<\/p>\n