Bill Pettit

TU Rome, Professor of Visual Arts

Bill Pettit
Seascape #14 (Nova Scotia) 
Oil on panel 
28 x 38 cm
2022 

Why did I invite Candace Smith Corby?

Candice and William met at Temple Rome in 1993 as study abroad students. For the last several years, they have collaborated through course design and co-teaching, as well as on many projects concerning the origins of materials and color (with a Temple University Presidential Arts and Humanities grant), studio work, and with exhibitions. These collaborations follow a shared interest in the historical, physical, and poetic intentions of art making.

The group of paintings in the Temple University Faculty Exhibit is inspired by their upcoming exhibition at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, called “Now and Soon and Somehow Forever.” While Pettit’s endless seascapes address the infinity of distance and isolation, Smith Corby’s group of intimate shell portraits beckon a reconciliation of distance and yearning through a substituted souvenir.

In our post-pandemic times, their works call to each other to create a universal dialogue of desire and longing that engages tropes of gender through issues of home/away, and the interior/exterior.

Candace Smtih Colby
The Calling
Oil and enamel on canvas
9 x 12 inches
2022

Meet the Artists

  • Faculty

    William Pettit is an artist and Professor at John Cabot University, Iowa State University Rome Program, and Temple University Rome. He works with ancient painting media and methods in a contemporary discourse. He is interested in the physical and poetic aspects of the landscape. His recent show “Landscapes” features painting and poetry, with catalog supported by John Cabot University.

  • Invited Artist

    Candice Smith Corby is an artist, and Professor and the Director of the Carol Calo Gallery in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Stonehill College near Boston, MA. She is interested in connecting contemporary image-making with historical methods and materials. She was the invited 2018-19 Guest Artist at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA which included an artist book and solo exhibition “Inhabiting Folk Portraits.”