Bill Keith (artist)

William "Bill" Keith (January 20, 1929 – September 1, 2004) was an American artist who began his artistic life as a painter, but moved into photography and visual poetry. His visual poetry ran a full gamut from calligrams inspired by Apollinaire and other early 20th Century French poets to Lettrisme to the Minimalism and Op Art of the 1960s.

As his work developed, Keith concentrated increasingly on African and African-American themes and sources. This development toward African roots and branches led away from the Roman alphabet and more toward the store of iconography and symbolism from Egypt to South Africa to the American diaspora. Consequently, Keith developed graphic techniques suggested by textiles, wood carvings, bronze casts, ceramics, and other indigenous arts.

An example of Keith's recreation of the substance of his visual style and the very nature of his own particular artistic interventions would now be traced in his use of rhythmic patterns through repetitions of graphic elements from sources as diverse as road signs and zebra stripes. Keith's work as a whole became a celebration of the adventures of African sources as they moved and interacted with the rest of the world. Individual works may initially seem merely decorative, but familiarity reveals a call to the kinetics and dynamics of celebration.

Bill Keith

Bill Keith may refer to:

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Bill Keith (musician)

William Bradford "Bill" Keith (December 20, 1939 – October 23, 2015) was a five-string banjoist who made a significant contribution to the stylistic development of the instrument. In the 1960s he introduced a variation on the popular "Scruggs style" of banjo playing (an integral element of bluegrass music) which would soon become known as melodic style, or "Keith style".

Professional career

Keith was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Amherst College and graduated in 1961. In 1963 he became a member of Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys. Keith's recordings and performances during these nine months with Monroe permanently altered banjo playing, and his style became an important part of the playing styles of many banjoists. After leaving the Bluegrass Boys, he joined "Jim Kweskin Jug Band" playing plectrum banjo. He began playing the steel guitar and soon after 1968, found himself working together with Ian and Sylvia and Jonathan Edwards. In the 1970s Keith recorded for Rounder Records. Over the years he performed with several other musicians, such as Clarence White and David Grisman in Muleskinner, Tony Trischka, Jim Rooney and Jim Collier. Today, Keith style is still regarded as modern or progressive in the context of bluegrass banjo playing. He was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at an awards ceremony in Raleigh, NC on October 1, 2015 and delivered a heartfelt address on that occasion, just three weeks prior to his death. He died of cancer at his home in Woodstock, New York on October 23, 2015.

Bill Keith (politician)

Billy P. Keith, known as Bill Keith (born August 19, 1934), currently resides in Longview, Texas with his wife, Vivian. A writer of fiction and nonfiction , he served from 1980 to 1984 as a Democratic member of the Louisiana State Senate. As a legislator, he was particularly known for his promotion of a state law requiring balanced treatment in the instruction of creation science and evolution in public schools.

A Tahlequah, Oklahoma native, Keith graduated from Wheaton College, a private American four-year Christian liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois, with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. While at SWBTS, he worked in the public relations office with Bill Moyers, later the press secretary to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. After the publication of Keith's most recent book in 2009, Moyers sent him a note of goodwill.

Career

A long-time investigative journalist, Keith has traveled to thirty-five countries in the pursuit of his writings. His work as a reporter for The Shreveport Times in Shreveport, Louisiana, during the late 1970s. This position provided the experience and material for his 2009 book, The Commissioner: A True Story of Deceit, Dishonor, and Death, a study of Shreveport Public Safety Commissioner George W. D'Artois (1925–1977), who held office from 1962 to 1976 under the city commission form of government, which was disbanded in 1978. Keith also examines the assassination in 1976 of the Shreveport advertising executive Jim Leslie. D'Artois was implicated in the still unresolved Leslie case but died before he could stand trial.