My practice centers on the idea of being alone, concerning both the positive and the negative aspects. Loneliness is a concept I have been dealing with throughout most of my life and I feel that life experience bring out the best in me artistically.  What I find best shows these concepts is by performance, either live or on video, so that I can deal with these issues with my own physical being rather than an outside source to describe it for me. One aspect of loneliness that fascinates me is the idea of comfort, on how we find certain places or objects to make us feel safe. Performing live and on video depends on the nature of the performance in terms of if there is a certain part I want to pay attention to more than the whole body. My influences on performance include more popular media like music videos and live rock performances. To me they are a gateway to what most traditional performance artist did in the past and in the present, maybe because they draw in a more accessible wider audience, and I want to take what they do and put it in the more traditional art world. Also I’m always fascinated by the fetal position. To me it is the key symbol of being alone, all coiled up facing yourself with no one else surrounding you but your own body, and I always like to try to find ways to implement it in my pieces. Both the concepts of performing and being alone is a fascinating combination to me since performing for yourself would be seen as pointless with no one to share it with, but bringing the situations of loneliness in a public setting can always make for an interesting experience to bring the two opposites together.

William Skaleski is a working artist in Brookfield, Wisconsin. He has earned a BFA in Art & Design concentrating in Digital Studio Practice in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His practice centers on being alone, being able to perform concerning both positive and negative aspects. Both the concepts of performing and being alone is a fascinating combination to him; bringing the situations of loneliness in a public setting can always make for an interesting experience to bring the two opposites together. He has exhibited around the Milwaukee area as well in New York.