VALDOSTA — When you first look upon William Massey’s three-dimensional piece, “Essentially (For What It’s Worth),” it’s just a collage of stuff. There’s some glass, a car tag, a wheel and even a shoe. However, when you take a step back and look through a vintage, 1960s field camera that transposes the image upside down (or really right side up), a meticulous portrait of Massey’s father Bill is revealed.

“I didn’t have a great relationship with my father until I found art,” said Massey.

When Massey first went to Kennesaw State University, he majored in business. He used to think that life was all about making money. It wasn’t until he discovered his passion for art and he transferred to Valdosta State University that his life transformed.

“Happiness is more important than money,” said Massey.

Through art, Massey found happiness and even discovered that he could share that sentiment with others. In his spare time, Massey does various artistic projects with cancer patients at South Georgia Medical Center.

“I feel like art has an extra therapeutic effect on people,” said Massey.

Massey knows all about art as therapy as it was his own artistic venture that helped to express his relationship with his father. The transformation of “Essentially (For What It’s Worth)” and the story that the piece represents is inherently personal and yet, resonates deeply through vast audiences.

It all started when Massey did a left-hand drawing of various circles that were extremely imperfect. Out of those circles, he began to construct an image of himself.

“I really hate realism,” said Massey.

Massey figures if he wanted to create something that looked exactly like something else, he could just take a picture of it. Coincidentally, his father is a photographer.

He then decided to take the imperfect, two-dimensional image of himself and turn it into a three-dimensional piece. Massey has been a glass blower for three years and blew 50 or 60 glass balls in various sizes that he would piece together to make an image of himself.

“It looked horrible,” said Massey.

The piece was flimsy. It fell apart. It was weak both physically and artistically. During a review from his professor, it was determined that the most interesting part of the entire piece was an old, rusted can that Massey had sort of stuck onto the balls.

Massey shattered all of the glass balls and completely deconstructed the image of himself and decided to build a new piece in the image of his father.

“I did it in my father’s image instead of my own,” said Massey.

 As for the rusted can, he decided to explore a piece of found objects.

“I went along with that whole idea of imperfect objects,” said Massey.

He liked the idea of incoherent pieces that come together as a collective whole to form a single objective.

“When they collect and come together, they form a whole idea,” said Massey.

With the struggle of the initial self-portrait being flimsy and falling apart, Massey decided to make the image of his father the way his father would have made it. He used the methodology his father taught him to measure twice and cut once and he used the correct tools that his father taught him to use. The very back layer of the piece is metaphorically made in his image as it is tedious, right and stronger.

To construct his father’s image, Massey found objects that reminded him of their relationship. There’s a shoe as his father taught him how to walk, a bike wheel for when his father taught him how to ride a bike and a car tag that represents his father teaching him to drive. The broken glass of Massey’s portrait is also incorporated to create his father’s image.

Massey gathered objects from his metaphorical fathers, his professors at VSU such as paint brushes and books.

“I view them as fathers as much as my own father,” said Massey. “They taught me things.”

All of these things that individually mean nothing, as a can is a can and a shoe is a shoe, come together to make a deeply personal piece of art.

“I wanted the viewer to come up and see these fragments,” said Massey. “Until you would step away from it and see the collective whole.”

Facing the three-dimensional piece only gets you half way to the collective picture. It isn’t until you look through the field camera that you see the image the right way. Significant because as a child, you rarely see the bigger picture until shown by a significant mentor which in this case is Massey’s father.

“This piece is more to pay homage to my father and to my fathers of the program,” said Massey.

“Essentially (For What It’s Worth)” was featured at the “On Your Marks” senior exhibition at the VSU Fine Arts Gallery as well as Massey’s individual exhibition at Hildegard’s downtown. Though he graduated Saturday, May 5, with a degree in fine arts, it is not the end for Massey. The last week in May, Massey will be leaving for Italy for four months to participate in a work-study program with artist Jerome Cox.

“While I’m there, I hope to knock on some doors and meet some artists,” said Massey. “I’m just going to be relentless and meet as many people as I can.”



To view more art from Massey, visit his website WilliamMasseyArt.com and also visit him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/WilliamMasseyArt. His show at Hildegard’s will be on display until May 16.