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Jim McWilliams (born February 10, 1937) is an American artist and graphic designer who was active as an avant-garde performer and composer during the 1960s and 1970s.

Design and Teaching

McWilliams earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1959 and began his career in the typography department at Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia. [Dirk Dobke, “Dieter Roth in America” (London: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 2004), 61.] From 1962 to 1968, he was on the faculty at the Philadelphia College of Art, where he taught typography, industrial design, book arts, and printmaking and collaborated on book projects with the artist Claire Van Vliet, founder of Janus Press. [ Dobke, 61.] From 1968 through 1971, he was associate professor of graphic design at the Cooper Union in Manhattan. [ Dobke, 61.]

During the 1970s and 1980s, McWilliams held various creative and administrative positions at the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey, the Linweave Paper Company in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the Studley Press in Dalton, Massachusetts, and others. [Suzanne Slesin,”Paper Power: One Man’s Stylish Vision,” “New York Times”, Oct. 22, 1981.] [Dobke, 61.] While at Linweave, he used the company’s paper products to make a range of “imaginative and provocative” objects, many of which he installed in his own apartment. [See Slesin.]

During the 1970s and 1980s McWilliams also was active as a freelancer for publishers, colleges, and retailers. His design work has won awards from the Art Directors Clubs of New York, Philadelphia, and Hartford; the New York Type Directors Club; and the Communicating Arts Group of San Diego.

Performance Art

Concurrently with his work as a designer, McWilliams was involved with the New York and Philadelphia artistic avant-gardes, often under the pseudonym Joe Millions. [Howard Smith and Tracy Young, “Scenes,” “Village Voice”, Mar. 29, 1973.] In 1964, he assisted the Swiss artist Dieter Roth with his book “Snow”, which Roth completed while in residence at the Philadelphia College of Art. [ Dobke, 61, 63.] The same year, McWilliams initiated a series of performing arts events at the college that featured such artists and composers Nam June Paik, Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and others. [Dobke, 63.]

In May 1967, McWilliams took part in “The Museum of Merchandise," an exhibition of artist-designed furniture, fashion, and housewares organized by the Philadelphia arts patrons Audrey Sabol and Joan Kron. [Rita Reif, “In Philadelphia, Artists Cast a Pop Eye on Furniture and Fashions,” “New York Times”, May 12, 1967.] He designed shopping bags, neckties, and buttons for the event, and on opening night he directed a fashion show that featured a wedding gown designed by Christo. McWilliams’s own clothing designs were covered by the “Village Voice” in 1968. [Stephanie Harrington and Blair Sabol, “Joe Millions: Outside Fashion,” Village Voice, May 23, 1968.]

In 1968, in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square, McWilliams performed his composition “Sky Kiss”, in which he attempted to levitate while hanging from a bunch of helium-filled balloons. [Jeremy Heymsfeld, “Up, Up and Away Out?” Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 11, 1968.] Collaborations with Charlotte Moorman

After 1968, McWilliams’s performances were done mostly in collaboration with Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991), the avant-garde cellist whom he had met in 1964, when she performed at the Philadelphia College of Art with Nam June Paik. [Joan Rothfuss, “Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman” (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2014), 109-110.] McWilliams composed numerous works for her, including “Ice Music” (1972), in which she played a cello made of ice, until it melted; [Carman Moore, “International Carnival of Experimental Sound,” “Saturday Review” 55, no. 45 (Nov. 4, 1972), 66.] “Candy” (1973), in which she and her instrument were covered with chocolate fudge; [Barbara Moore, “Charlotte Moorman: Eroticello Variations”, “Ear Magazine” (May 1987)] and “C. Moorman in Drag” (1973), in which she wore a tuxedo and Pablo Casals mask while miming a performance of a Bach suite for solo cello. [“Topless Cellist”, 289ff.]

Beginning in 1966, McWilliams was a regular contributor to Moorman’s Annual New York Avant-Garde Festivals (1963-1980), a series of fifteen events that presented experimental art, music, and performance in iconic public sites in New York City (with one exception: the 1978 festival took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts). He wrote and performed “American Picnic”, a piece about overconsumption, in Moorman’s 4th festival, which was held in Central Park in 1966. [Michael T. Kaufman, “In Their Own Good Time” (NY: Saturday Review Press, 1973), 202-205] For the 1967 festival, held aboard a Staten Island ferry boat, he and a group of students dressed in wet suits, headlamps, and red face paint and slithered along the boat’s deck in a work called “Slow Dance on the Ferry”. [Elenore Lester, “The Night the Hippies Invaded the Staten Island Ferry,” “New York Times”, Oct. 8, 1967.] In 1968, McWilliams asked Moorman to perform “Sky Kiss” at the 6th festival, a parade down Central Park West; she liked the work so much that it became a standard in her repertoire. [David Bourdon, “A Letter to Charlotte Moorman,” "Art in America" 88, no. 6 (June 2000), 136.] During the 1970s, the pieces he wrote for her became increasingly spectacular and often were presented as the climactic events in the annual festivals. “The Second Coming of Charlotte Moorman” (8th festival, 89th Regiment Armory, 1971) had her burst from the top of a huge wood-and-paper birthday cake. [Fred W. McDarrah, “Down to His Last Mouse,” “Village Voice”, Nov. 25, 1971.] In “A Water Cello for Charlotte Moorman” (9th festival, South Street Seaport, 1972), she performed while submerged in a tank of water pumped in from the Hudson River. [Annette Kuhn, “The Underwater Cellist: Push Her Further Down,” “Village Voice”, Nov. 2, 1972.] “Flying Cello” (11th festival, Shea Stadium 1974) had Moorman attempt to make contact with her cello as they swung on separate trapezes, [Robin Reisig, “In which Charlotte Moorman attempts to play her cello on a trapeze and succeeds in kicking it, thereby making a sound,” “Village Voice”, Nov. 21, 1974.] and in “Cambridge Special for Charlotte, Elephant, and Cello” (14th Festival, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978) she rode through the streets of Cambridge on the back of an elephant. [“Topless Cellist”, 330.] In addition to his performances in Moorman’s festivals, McWilliams designed and supervised the printing of twelve of the fifteen festival posters. [“Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s”, Evanston,IL: Northwestern Univ. Press, 2016.] The posters are now in collections of numerous public and private institutions, including the Walker Art Center, the Fondation Bonatto, and the Getty Research Institute.

In 2001, the cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, formerly of the Kronos Quartet, revived McWilliams’s “Ice Music” for performances at Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. [“Charlotte Moorman,” “The Strad” 117, no. 1399 (November 2006), pp. 75-76]

See also

Joan Rothfuss, “Topless Cellist: The Improbable Life of Charlotte Moorman” (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014).

https://www.allthingsstrings.com/layout/set/print/News/Interviews-Profiles/The-Sky-Is-the-Limit-for-ex-Kronos-Cellist-Joan-Jeanrenaud

Barbara Moore, “Mellow Cello,” “Soho Weekly News”, Feb. 13, 1980.