Billy von Raven

Billy von Raven
This is a photo of me painting a work on wood as a gift for a neighbor, whose magnolia tree was chopped down.

Degree: BFA in Painting and Drawing, Minor in Creative Writing

Expected Graduation Date: Spring 2021

I’m From: Denton, TX

Why I Came to the UO and How I Chose My Major
I chose the University of Oregon because of its interdisciplinary approach to art as a method of inquiry, its reputation as a research university, the presence of a world class art museum on campus, and the access to so many trails and proximity to the outdoors. What I love the most about being in the College of Design is the community. My mentors and peers are phenomenal and inspiring. The visiting artist lectures are also an enriching experience that connect us to the broader art world

I feel like Art chose me. My whole life has been a work of creative survival. Without being able to express myself and make sense of the world with art, I don’t think I would have made it to adulthood intact. Really, it was about heeding the call and having the conviction to follow through. I listened and responded.

Unique Qualities I Bring to My Studies
My life experience has been what seems like one anomaly after the other, which really set me up to be on the trajectory of being an artist. I was born to hippie intellectual parents in a college town in Texas, where I was raised on a small subsistence farm and often visited a nearby off-grid collective of artists and radical thinkers. I first went to college to study music composition, but didn’t have the funding to finish. I wrote sonatas and string quartets, but I also played organ for a punk band and was a part of my college town’s rock scene. Later, I was heavily involved in volunteering for community centers in Portland and put on a rock opera, synthesizing my musical training with art. I came out as queer and transgender, and became an activist in the LGBTQ community. I also helped a friend on an urban farm in the Cully neighborhood, built a tiny house to live in, and organized art shows with my community. Just before coming to UO, I lived in rural New Mexico to return to farm life, where I learned how to live without electricity and running water, how to take care of pigs, alpacas, llamas, and horses, and how to chop wood and catch rainwater. All these experiences, from the city’s creative scenes to rural farming, have deeply fed my artistic well.

My Influential Professors
Sylvan Lionni’s approach to teaching freed me to regard anything and everything as pertinent to art. There are no rules, only that which has been done before. Any sort of prescriptive approach I may have taken before was completely stripped away by this freeing notion. He also encourages endless practice in making work. For our first drawing class assignment, we were to complete fifty drawings. I was excited about this challenge, and suggested that we could even do a hundred, to the chagrin of some of my classmates! We learn by doing, and to be an artist means making work.

My Extracurricular Activities
I’m currently involved in Unbound, a student-run literary arts journal. I serve as a poetry editor and as creative director. This journal is important to me as a platform for students to share their creative work. The ability to share my creative explorations was critical for my mental health as a younger person. It gave me confidence and a sense of connectedness to the community. For this reason, I want to continue being involved in making creative expression accessible to all.

My Greatest Learning Experience at UO
The greatest experience I have had is the countless hours I’ve spent looking at the works of great contemporary artists at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on campus, such as Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, Helen Frankenthaler, Theaster Gates, and many others. Thanks to the University, I can literally sit before these master works, study them, and talk to my peers and teachers about them. This opportunity and the visiting artist lectures are fantastic. To be able to ask questions directly of artists like Hank Willis Thomas and Wendy Red Star is a huge privilege.

After Graduation
I want to be able to support myself and others through making, sharing, and teaching art and poetry. My next step is to finish an MFA program in Art, with the goal to become a professional artist, writer, and teacher. I believe that stories and images are pivotal in the human experience and that creative expression is a primary need for all beings and a powerful tool for survival, especially for marginalized groups and landscapes. Through work as an artist and teacher, I want to support those who are underrepresented in accessing their own creativity. When everyone has access to the tools of cultural production, everyone can participate in an equitable way, and true change can come about. I don’t need to be a famous artist, but I do want to make a difference in people’s lives, to inspire others to live more fully.

Your Gift
As someone who grew up in relative poverty, to be able to attend college studying what I love without going into huge debt is the most amazing gift. This scholarship enables me to pursue what I could only dream of as a kid. This means being able to go on to an MFA program and be a professional artist, to make a livelihood out of what I am the most passionate about.

Giving people the chance to do what they love through education is the most beautiful gift, one that makes a BFA degree possible for me where I could not have accessed it before. This has been a lifelong dream for me, and I am speechless. Thank you.