Paul Villinski was born in York, Maine, USA, in 1960, the son of an Air Force navigator. He has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. A scenic route through the educational system included stops at Phillips Exeter Academy and the Massachusetts College of Art, and a BFA with honors from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1984. He lives with his partner, the painter Amy Park, and their son, Lark, in their studios in Long Island City, NY.
Villinski's work has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally, recently including the solo exhibition “Passage: A Special Project,” at the Blanton Museum, University of Texas, Austin; “Making Mends,” at the Bellevue Museum of Arts, Bellevue, WA; “Second Lives: Re-purposing the Ordinary,” at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; and “Prospect .1,” an international Biennial in New Orleans, LA. “Emergency Response Studio,” a FEMA trailer redesigned and rebuilt into a solar-and wind-powered mobile artist’s studio, was the subject of a solo exhibition at Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, TX; the exhibition also travelled to Ballroom Marfa, in Marfa, TX; Wesleyan University’s Zilkha Gallery, Middletown, CT; and the trailer was featured in the New Museum’s “Festival of Ideas for the New City”, in New York, NY.
Corporate collections include Fidelity Investments; Microsoft; Progressive Insurance; ADP; McCann Erickson International; New York Life; Ritz-Carlton and many others. He has been a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Serenbe Institute, GA; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; the Millay Colony, NY; the Ucross Foundation, WY; the Djerassi Foundation, CA; and the Villa Montalvo Arts Center, CA. Villinski has been reviewed in periodicals including ARTnews; Artforum; Art in America; Sculpture; Interior Design; Design Bureau; New York Magazine; and ID. Newspapers include the New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Los Angeles Times; Washington Post; Houston Chronicle; International Herald Tribune; Village Voice; Seattle Times; New Haven Register; Toronto Star; Times-Picayune and many others.
