William Bolcom – American Musician

This is a portrait of William Bolcom, Grammy award-winning composer, pianist, and recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Pulitzer Prize. He was professor of composition at the University of Michigan, and one of the primary people in the rebirth of interest in ragtime music. With his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, he’s made many recordings of American popular songs, from Civil War times to the present, The proportions of the rectangular shape of the medal reflect the typical dimensions of sheet music. It is subtitled “American Musician” according to the wishes of Bolcom because, like the French composer Claude Debussy, he is not only a composer but a composer and a performer, and Debussy used to sign his letters “Cluade Debussy, musicien français.”

Two Sides of the Same Soul

This medal is about a young man who is also a drag artist. The obverse shows him as a male-identified young man, with a ferric patina, while the reverse shows the same young man in drag, with a silver nitrate patina. The medal treats the illusion of facial changes, brought about through makeup, as actual physical, bodily reality. Also, with a silver nitrate patina, the reverse conjures the light of the moon and a glittery nighttime venue.