Wagner College art professor Bill Murphy has published his second book of art work, “From Life 2002-2011.”
The book is organized into four chapters, mostly containing images drawn, engraved or painted from a particular site: Kreischerville and the shipping graveyard on Staten Island’s Arthur Kill waterway; the Gowanus Canal and Brooklyn; Richmond Terrace, wending along the North Shore of Staten Island, including Mariner’s Harbor and the Bayonne Bridge; and “other places” around New York. (You can read — and hear — a radio story recently broadcast on WNYC about Murphy’s beloved Kreischerville.)
“From Life,” self-published by Murphy, is published through Blurb, an online print-on-demand publisher that specializes in fine art books. Interested readers can preview the entire book on the Blurb website before making their purchase. The book is 66 pages long and features 55 illustrations, many of them in color, as well as six pages of text and notes explaining the choices and placement of the work. It is printed on premium matte paper. The softcover edition, available by mail from Blurb, costs $34.95 plus shipping.
Murphy has also published a limited hardcover edition of “From Life,” which includes a new etching, “Sternpost”, affixed inside the front cover, which can easily be removed for framing. Each hardcover book is signed and numbered; the total edition is 50 books/prints. Murphy says that he will be glad to sign the book with a personal inscription or toss in a remarque’ (personalized drawing) at no cost. The cost of the limited edition hardcover book with print is $149, with free shipping inside the continental United States. To inquire about purchasing the limited edition of “From Life,” e-mail Bill Murphy.
The artist
Bill Murphy, born on Staten Island in 1952, studied art at Brooklyn College, the School of Visual Arts (where he earned his BFA) and the Art Students League — “though my real education was to occur later in the watermark course, ‘Survival in a Ruthless World: How to Handle Success and Failure as an Artist and a Person,’ taught on the streets and in the exhibition halls of New York,” he wrote in his 2003 book, “Nothing But a Burning Light.”
He began teaching at Wagner College in 1984. Ten years later, he earned his MFA from Vermont College.
Professor Murphy has previously served as chairman of the Wagner College Art Department; he currently serves as director of the Wagner College Gallery in the Union building. He is frequently commissioned to paint oil portraits of Wagner historical figures and trustees.
Murphy has earned multiple distinctions through the course of his career. In 2008, his peers at Wagner College gave him the Outstanding Scholar Award. He was named “Staten Island’s Best Visual Artist” in the 2007 Staten Island Advance reader’s poll, and he won first place in the American Artist magazine’s 2007 printmaking competition for his etching, “Eulogy for Kreischerville.”
Visit Bill Murphy at his website.