Bill Arnold

Bill Arnold was born on November 28, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his B.A. from San Francisco State College in 1963, and received a M.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. Arnold sees his role as an artist as finding the beauty in everyday experiences and capturing them with the lens of a camera. This mentality was popular in the 1970s, when Arnold worked with artists such as Tom Zimmermann, Christian Sunde, Steve Smith, Ingeborg Gerdes, Dennis Hearne, Elaine Mayes, and Jerry Burchard to embrace the allure of the everyday world. Bill Arnold was extremely influenced by new technologies in photography, such as the Itek reading and printing machine he uncovered in 1970 at a public library. Not only did Arnold use this machine for his own work, but he also utilized the new technology in his classroom as a professor, creating a more interactive environment for his students. Bill Arnold displays the wonder of the world through his art, and inspires other to celebrate their day to day experiences. He has received many honors such as a National Endowment for the Arts grant and his work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.