“The heart is [an] important symbol for me which has universal and spiritual qualities…I feel that when my work is at its best there is a direct channel from my heart to my hands…it is my sincere intent to further uncover the secrets of the universe through my work and to share them.”  – Bill Sabo, 1988.

            Retired University of Alaska Anchorage art professor Bill Sabo, 77, died on April 27, 2024, in Tulare, Calif.

            Now that Bill Sabo’s hands have wrapped up their mission on this planet, we are left with these art relics to interpret the messages his heart broadcasted from “myths, dreams, meditations, and Spenard.”  His graduate studies in Arts & Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University reflected his fascination with religion, mysticism, mythology, symbolism, and how those subjects related to the creation and understanding of art. These ideas surfaced persistently in his work throughout the rest of his life. Through the personal language of symbols he developed, which appear in drawings, watercolor paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and mixed media works, we can follow his quests to understand and describe the world he experienced. In the construction of his most distinctive technique, the stitching together of painted pieces of 300lb watercolor paper with sinew, we witness a ritual of connection. Hands to heart, man to nature, artist to the artists and stories who came before him. 

            Perhaps the secret turned out to be that the quest itself is the meaning. We will remember his explorations were humorous, playful, emotional, full of curiosity, occasionally solemn, frequently irreverent, and wide open to opportunities for impossible things to become real. After a lifetime as a relentless seeker, now he’s the one we will look for in every raven or coffee cup. He’s still the bear, the shaman, the fisherman, and the fish, and he’s still looking, and still listening.

Click here to link to an Anchorage Daily News story about Bill and his art.