Of the hundreds of pieces of art he has created over the years, Bill Horvath struggles to identify which is his favorite.
That’s because it’s likely one he has yet to make.
“It’s hard to say because every time I create something new, it often becomes a favorite,” said Horvath, full-stack engineer supervisor at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
“As my skills improve over time, each piece of work gets more sophisticated and interesting to me, which is very rewarding.”
Art has been a part of Horvath’s life since his mother took classes at the Toledo Museum of Art and eventually signed him up as well. He and his friends would spend hours together drawing, but he set aside his art supplies during high school and beyond before returning to pen and ink drawing just over a decade ago.
“I picked it back up as a hobby when my kids got old enough to entertain themselves for 10 minutes at a time,” Horvath said. “I started in pen and ink because that was the kind of thing I could put down and not have to do any cleanup. It was minimal in terms of the required effort to start and stop, which is also conducive to having running distractions on a regular basis.”
Since then, he’s built up a sizable and impressive portfolio of works that showcase his wide range of talents. They have been on display at several galleries and are the subject of a 174-page coffee table book.
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Whether in black and white or color, Horvath’s pieces are often created to be what he calls “gravity agnostic.” He mounts his work on devices that allow viewers to rotate the piece.
“The idea is, particularly on the larger pieces with more material in them, you can see them from different angles and discover new ways of looking at the art that you didn’t see before,” he said. “It doesn’t matter which way is down in the piece. People seem very pleased with that once they figure it out. And it’s a lot of fun to make it that way.”
His inspiration for his black-and-white pieces usually comes from topics in the news. For example, he heard a story on National Public Radio about the opioid epidemic affecting displaced West Virginia coal miners. That led him to think about U.S. manufacturing jobs moving overseas from the country’s Rust Belt, resulting in despair, disability and drug abuse.
From that, he created two pieces, with a third in mind. “Hands Across America” highlights this with a working hand, idle hands and a handful of pills. “Giant Sucking Sound” aims to depict the closing of factories as the root cause of many problems.
Both pieces were part of the “Falling Into Place” exhibit Horvath did five years ago with Michelle Carlson at Toledo’s 20 North Gallery. He added a special element to the pieces for that exhibit.
“When I have the opportunity, I like to laser cut the frames in unique shapes, which adds to the overall gravity-agnostic effect and makes the frame part of the art really,” Horvath said. “Those were done that way.”
Pen and ink are his primary tools, but he also creates art in color. While he draws from news stories for his black-and-white creations, things he encounters in nature or his immediate surroundings inspire his color work.
Horvath will snap photos and save them in a folder to later derive inspiration. A photo of a flower led to him creating “Flora and Fauna,” a geometrical blast of colors that looks like stained glass with cattails, waterfowl and flowers incorporated within the open spaces of the shapes. The piece was on display in 2022 at the “Disclosed” exhibit and now hangs in his office in the Perry Building.
“The black-and-white ones where I’m doing something to denote something attention-worthy are more intentional in what I include and where I include it, but pieces like this just sort of happen organically as I’m going,” he said.
Many of Horvath’s works over the years are featured in “A Brush with Art: Nature, Nonsense, and Noble Causes,” a 174-page book he worked on with Polina Lilu. Lilu approached Horvath about the project, and Horvath had one request.
“A lot of artists have done coloring books, and I said if I’m going to do this, I want it to be more of a coffee table-style book,” he said. “I want something to share with people for the purpose of bringing them joy.”
That also includes submitting five of his photos to go with works from other artists for another coffee table book with Lilu called “Pathways Through Adversity: Finishing Healing Messages With Your Experience.”
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The book will feature photos along with a quote from the artists addressing themes such as depression, hopelessness, betrayal, resilience, compassion and connection. Some of the quotes will be incomplete to encourage the reader to fill in the blank with their own experiences.
Never one to rest on his laurels and always seeking opportunities to expand his abilities and talents, Horvath is stepping into the world of metal sculpture. He said he now has the core equipment of a welder, plasma cutter and forge he built recently, and he’ll begin to transfer his ideas into maquettes — preliminary models or sketches — before scaling those into larger pieces.
He has a couple of ideas for maquettes in mind that will leverage some of the natural properties of the mild steel he has, and envisions them being about 2-3 cubic feet. Horvath also has the materials needed to weld stainless steel, so if the maquettes turn out in his favor, he plans to make a larger version in stainless steel and place it outside to see how it handles the weather.
Horvath is excited to see what this new world holds, but drawing remains his passion. Revisiting the question of his favorite piece, he points to “Just Ken,” a 12-by-12-inch pen-and-glaze creation featured in this year’s “Undisclosed” exhibit that raises funds for the Toledo School of the Arts.
The mostly black-and-white drawing features a likeness of Ryan Gosling portraying Ken from the movie “Barbie” splashed in bright pink. He mounted the piece in his signature gravity-agnostic style on a panel painted with highly reflective silver paint. A second panel painted pink allows that color to dance off the silver when the piece is rotated.
“That’s my current favorite, but I reserve the right to change my mind when a new one comes out in a month,” he said with a laugh.
