Bill Burgard: Solstice observations

In Ann Arbor, summer’s return brings back the sun, better parking, and — for the second half of June — two weeks of free art, music, and movies on U‑M’s Ingalls Mall for the Ann Arbor Summer Festival (A2SF). This year’s festival also marks another return, with artist and Stamps faculty member Bill Burgard’s first promotional poster for A2SF in 17 years.

Longtime residents may recognize Burgard’s colorful, intricate illustration and collage work, which was regularly featured on Summer Festival posters from 1984 – 2003, when he served as the festival’s art director, and again for its 25^th anniversary in 2008. 

“This year, they just said, ​‘Maybe we should try one,” Burgard says.

Working on this year’s edition in his basement studio, Burgard explains how the origins of his bold, colorful, mixed-media style came from frustration while working early on as a freelance illustrator for publications and businesses. In those days, everything was done by hand, and finding good examples to draw from meant a trip to the local library.

“Every time I drew something completely realistic it was boring, or it was so difficult to find good references,” he says. ​“Even when I worked really hard at precise rendering and was very rigid about it, at the end of the day, I would not be happy.”

When he started cutting out the parts he didn’t like, he realized he preferred things a little less literal and enjoyed the process of physically layering in different elements.

“I thought, ​‘I can either sit here and feel terrible or I can just cut it apart. And I started going, ​‘Wow, this is way more exciting!’ That’s how it started. It was like, ​‘Well, if you don’t like it, just get rid of that part.’ ”

From the initial festival poster featuring Marcel Marceau (fun fact: the famous French mime was in town that year and signed posters for sale at a gallery with Burgard) through lively lady bugs, surreal swing dancers, and musicians on the moon, he found new ways to fully develop variations on the recurring theme of ​“outdoor summer party” each year, with the goal of delighting viewers without pandering.

“I try to get it so it’s not just cute or not just a joke,” he says. ​“I’d rather have it be a little more sophisticated. Even if you’re using something kind of goofy.” 

Finding that right mix of charm and intent also drives Burgard’s public art, which can be seen around town, from the Birds of the Huron mural on the Manchester Water Tower off of Washtenaw Avenue, to wayfinding signage around Ypsilanti, to murals at a couple of Ann Arbor elementary schools (view a partial map of Burgard’s Washtenaw County public art here).

“One of the things I work hard at is making sure it’s something appropriate for the space,” he says. ​“It’s not just that I have something I want to paint, it’s there because it looks good and it tells a cool story that relates to where we are.”

More recently, he’s been working with the Ann Arbor Art Center — where he also helped design a display recognizing donors — on plans to paint planter boxes on North University Street and consulting a group of muralists about giving a ​“rusty, nasty” railroad bridge near Argo Park a makeover.

Commercial clients over the years have included Sleeping Bear Press, Sports Illustrated, and Starbucks, and he’s also designed commemorative coins for the U.S. Mint.

At Stamps, Burgard helps students develop their own skills in illustration and drawing, including rendering conceptual ideas. For the last 13 or so years, he’s run the Stamps Lecture Series course, in which students get credit for attending curated public talks at the Michigan Theater by prominent visiting artists, designers, performers, critics, and theorists. As the semester winds down, his inbox fills up with essays from the more than 600 students who take the course each semester.

After teaching illustration and drawing for more than 30 years, Burgard says he still likes ​“being in the room where it happens” and contributing to the evolving process of working with, and learning from, students and colleagues.

“If I stop teaching, I feel like I’d miss out on some pretty cool stuff,” he says. ​“I almost treat everybody as an equal. I’m not some big, high, and mighty instructor that’s going to make you do something. It’s more like, ​‘Tell me about yourself. Why are you here? How can I help you?’ ”

Summer Festival Posters

Bill Burgard has created twenty-one unique designs for the Ann Arbor Summer Festival over the years, starting with a 1984 poster that features Marcel Marceau.