William Harroff joined the Supermen of America
in 1959 and has done his best to pursue truth, justice
and the American Way ever
since. He was awarded the 1st “Marvelmaniac of the Month” in 1969 by
Mark Evanier and a coveted “No-Prize” by Stan Lee soon after.
Harroff has been a book artist and librarian
for twenty years, working almost exclusively in digital formats
for the last
eight years. He has been the recipient of an NEA / Arts Midwest Visual Art
fellowship, an
NEA Regional Artists’ Project grant, a Ragdale Foundation
residency and top honors in a number of
international art competitions. He also
taught illustration for several years at Oskar Kokoschka’s “School of
Vision” in
Salzburg, Austria. His work is included in collections throughout the world,
including London’s
Victoria & Albert Museum, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary
Art, and the New York Public Library.
His artwork has been profiled in leading
art journals such as AfterImage, Art Calendar and Contemporary
Impressions. He has lectured extensively on electronic bookworks at leading
universities and has held
faculty positions at SIUE and Oklahoma State
University. Since 1997, he has served as the Reference &
Information Technologies Librarian at McKendree College.
(r)Evolutionary (e)Books
is a cutting edge “online happening,” the brainchild of William
Harroff and
Charlotte Johnson, noteworthy ebook evangelists. The "Brother Bill &
Sister
Char (r)Evolutionary (e)Books
Traveling Tour” has included performances,
presentations and workshops at institutions around the
United States, as well as
at Australia’s Future of the Book symposium, professional conferences such as
the Library and Information Technology Association National Forum; the
Metropolitan New York Library
Council; the Illinois State Library; the first
Illinois Online Conference; and the first joint conference of the
Art Libraries
Society of North America / Visual Resources Association. In 2002, their
associated website
<http://faculty.mckendree.edu/william_harroff/ebe.htm> received a
P22 design award. The (r)Evolutionary
(e)Books model was also selected as
a 2002
Best Practice by the Illinois State Library.
Most recently, Harroff collaborated in an installation named Sea Words,
now appearing at the Kilmore Quay
in Wexford, Ireland and at the Budapest
Festival at Artpool in a show entitled Parallel Realities. Within the
last few
months, Harroff was awarded an Illinois Arts Council International Artist Travel
Award and the
distinguished Beta Phi Mu Frank E. Sessa Scholarship. Two new
peer-reviewed books, Ulises Carrion;
Artists Books, published by D.A.P.
and the Proceedings of the Future of the Book Conference 2003, both
include his work, as well.
