bill batson
Bill Batson is an artist, writer and activist. His work chronicles the history of a Hudson-valley river village that his family has lived in since the 1880’s.
From 2011 until 2021, Batson published a weekly column called the Nyack Sketch Log. His columns and illustrations have inspired public art projects that champion local history, plein-air art making and conversations, forums and a documentary about the legacy of Nyack’s urban renewal program.
In May, 2012 Bill became the artist-in-residence at the year-round Nyack Chamber of Commerce’s Farmers’ Market.
You can visit Bill at his booth every Thursday, year-round from 8:00a – 2p at the municipal parking lot.
On June 16, 2012, Batson produced the world’s first “Flash Sketch Mob” in Nyack.
In 2015, he chaired Nyack Commemoration Committee, an effort that successfully established a Toni Morrison Society “Bench by the Road” monument in memorial park.
In 2018, he directed the Nyack Record Shop Project, a community component of the Carrie Mae Weems exhibit at the Edward Hopper House that collected three dozen oral histories of the local African American community.
In February 2019, Bill moderated a panel discussion at Rivertown Film Society in Nyack after a screening of the film Boom For Real: The Late Teen Years of Jean-Michel Basquait with the film’s director, Sara Driver and Basquait friend, the painter Brett De Palma.
In 1988, as the Art Coordinator for the New York City Housing Authority, he founded the Harborview Arts Center, a fully equipped visual media training center that provides art programming to support community and senior centers staff across the five boroughs. The year round arts program conducts staff development workshops, distributes art supplies to community centers, and organizes a Summer Art Camp with museum tours.
Bill’s writing has appeared in Essence Magazine, New York’s Amsterdam News, and The Argus in Cape Town, South Africa. While in South Africa, Bill received the Bertram’s Young Writer Award and won first place in the Sidelines Journal Student Essay competition. One of his essays, “In Africa Men Hold Hands” is included in a college text book written by Susan Ankara and published in 2003 by Bedford St. Martin’s.
Bill’s work as an artist has been profiled in New York Newsday (6/27/99), Daily Heights (6/16/05), Brooklyn Rail,(12/04/06), and The Journal News (2/26/05) and NyackNewsandViews (1/4/18)
