Introduction by Amy Purcell:

Cincinnati artist, James Billiter, has a unique eye for preserving the past. His work blends an Art Deco spirit with a modern approach, giving his illustrations a sense of architectural vibrancy.

Born in 1976 in Madisonville, Billiter grew up in an artistic household. His love for printmaking began early on as he watched his mother Claudette work as a commercial artist in the pre-computer era of pre-computer of paste-up and marker compositions.

He graduated from the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning in 2001. It was here that Billiter’s passion for providing affordable and accessible artwork for everyone began. He started Billlter Studio to pursue his love for custom typography, pattern, illustration and printmaking through which he offers limited-edition yet affordable collectible prints.

Billiter takes an “applied art” approach to design: once a concept is developed for an audience, he brings his ideas to life through hand-crafted methods. For example, “the ink used in one of his Fountain Square prints was mixed with water scooped straight from the fountain. And each print of “Cincy Beer City,” contains the remnants of a flight of beer.’ (CityBeat). The studio also allows Billiter to explore his wide-ranging interests in printmaking, sign painting, ceramics and sculpture. The themes of his work spans architecture, nature, cycling, music, brewing history and more.

He has worked with Cincinnati businesses and organizations such as Procter and Gamble, Duke Energy, The Woodward Theater, Incline Public House, Keep Cincinnati Beautiful, The Taft Museum of Art, Arnold’s Bar and Grill, Rhinegeist and Cincinnati ArtWorks on artwork that celebrates our local culture and our heritage.

His work can be found at BilliterStudio.com as well as numerous Cincinnati craft events and at Cincy Shirts, Ampersand Gallery, Deerhaus Decor among others.

Billiter believes that the city’s heritage “grounds us in who we are as a culture: our common history, myths and values.”

‘I hope that my art celebrates place’: City’s buildings, history inspire artist James Billiter

Cincinnati Enquirer • November 23, 2021
Written by Jeff Seuss, Photography by Sam Greene
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/2021/11/24/cincinnati-artist-james-billiter-history-vintage-artwork/6139711001/
Studio and process photography by Sam Greene:
https://www.cincinnati.com/picture-gallery/entertainment/2021/11/24/artist-james-billiter-his-studio/8660902002/

“It’s nice to tinker and expand and experiment with different aesthetics and maybe slightly evolve,” Billiter said from his space at Essex Studio in Walnut Hills. “I call it fine design, where you’re elevating graphic design and making it more about artwork.”

In his hands, Cincinnati appears classy yet fresh. What he hopes are inspiringly beautiful graphic art pieces that really capture the landmarks. His goal is to create affordable art prints that can be accessible to everyone.

“There’s been times, especially like 15 to 20 years ago, we weren’t as proud of where we lived as much,” Billiter said. “There was less excitement around our community. I remember feeling that and wanting to move away, but then once I stayed here really wanting to make the city better, if possible, or make people proud to live here.

“So I hope that my art celebrates place, and then if you’re proud of where you live, maybe you’re more proud of who you are and contribute to your community more. So that’s kind of the underlying theme.”

New and old ways merge
In the computer age, when posters can be digitally printed in seconds, Billiter works old school, screen-printing each layer of color one at a time by hand. But that doesn’t mean he shuns modern technology.

He sketches either with pen and ink or on an iPad, then tightens up the drawing on the computer, which gives him the precision he needs and allows him to undo any mistakes.

New and old, at the same time: Images drawn and honed in the computer, then printed using a method that dates back to the 1930s.

Billiter prepared a screen-printing set-up, a mesh screen stretched over a frame with the image of the 150-year-old Tyler Davidson Fountain. His drawing was printed on film like a photo negative, then exposed to an ultra-violet light, which caused a reaction in a layer of photosensitive emulsion coated on the screen and created a stencil.

For this batch of monoprints, Billiter hand-painted orange and verdigris green watercolor dyes onto the screen. He poured a line of transparent ink and spread it across the screen, then used a special squeegee to pull the ink through the holes in the mesh, transferring the ink – now infused with the watercolors – through the stencil to the paper underneath.

“It’s kind of a higher-end process,” he explained. “A lot of my larger editions use typical screen printing or letterpress, and this one you usually get maybe five out of it, so it makes it a little more precious.”

The printed image is imprecise, individual.

“That’s the interesting thing with printmaking,” Billiter once told CityBeat. “Each one you receive is both a duplicate and an original.”

Layer by layer
Billiter, 45, lives in Madisonville and grew up there. He remembers taking trips with his dad on the Metro, epic adventures to downtown Cincinnati. Going to the observation deck at the top of Carew Tower, visiting Fountain Square and the holiday train display. That cultivated his interest in the city’s buildings.

A metal print of one of his most popular images is a tableau of Cincinnati landmarks, layered as though they were gathered to pose for a picture. Music Hall, PNC Tower and Great American Tower are joined by some surprises – the gazebo at Mount Storm Park, historic zoo buildings and UC’s much-maligned Crosley Tower, the single-pour concrete tower fluted at the top.

“I usually try to sneak that in as long as it’s there,” Billiter said of Crosley Tower, which is set to be demolished in 2025.

When he was 6 years old, he went to a pediatrician appointment near the campus and took notice of the tower. “It looks like a weird rocket ship smashed into the earth. That is what my little 6-year-old brain thought. I just love it,” he said. “I think that was one of the first times that I really thought about architecture. That architecture just wasn’t in the past but living, growing. It’s not just history.”

Another press of the ink creates another print with slight variations. No two are the same.

“It’s almost like when you stamp a stamp,” he said, “every time you print it becomes fainter and fainter.”

His mother was a stay-at-home graphic artist, and he watched her work with paste-up design in the days before computers. He used to sit on the floor of the studio and do his own projects.

“She was kind of like an art teacher, giving me something to do so she could focus on her projects and I was there in the studio with her,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was sort of following in her footsteps.”

Billiter earned a degree in design from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning in 2001, then studied screen printing and letterpress in evening classes at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

“It was about probably 2014 I really fell in love with the work and producing the work, and I think it was a way to share my passion for the city and obviously history,” Billiter said.

He used to bike commute and pass by the city’s landmarks up close, then go home and try to replicate them in his designs. He likens his images to Victorian posters, a callback to the city’s history with the Strobridge Lithography Company that printed world-famous circus posters, he said.

Old and new. Another printing of the fountain, fainter than the last.

Pinned to the walls where Billiter creates his art are building sketches by Enquirer artist Caroline Williams and a print of E.T. Hurley’s “The Midnight Mass,” showing Immaculata Church in Mount Adams. The geometric animal designs of Charley Harper are another influence, Billiter said, inspiring his playful side, an homage to mid-century illustration.

That side comes through in some of his mural work. He recently collaborated with artists Maria Nacu, Michael Colbert and Anissa Pulcheon on a colorful community mural of East Walnut Hills.

“It’s such a reward to do public art,” he said.

Billiter goes back and forth between the two aesthetic worlds, one that is historic and formal, in dark colors and gold, the other that is modern and delightful. “Then it’s really fun to make things playful and just embrace the full rainbow of colors,” he said.

After four or five prints, the ink is not as effective. Like aged, weathered advertising.

Then the screen gets washed and scrubbed, readied for another print.

Paintings unite communities at Duke Energy service center 

Employees' ideas helped inspire artist who created paintings to brighten walls at offices in Cincinnati
Duke-Energy.com • January 23, 2020
By Lawrence Toppman, illumination contributor
https://illumination.duke-energy.com/articles/paintings-unite-communities-at-duke-energy-service-center

A bar of Ivory soap the size of a barge floats down the Ohio River. A foaming glass of beer towers above the skyline. The long-gone Cincinnati Gas Light and Coke Co. peeps out over the cityscape. In James Billiter’s world, a series of color-bursting murals, the treasured past and fantastical present meet.

And the people who see these paintings every day – employees at Duke Energy’s Customer Service Center in Cincinnati – are the ones who helped inspire them.

When Duke Energy consolidated three customer service locations into one renovated building in 2017, bare walls set executives thinking: Why not create an environment with images from all three states – Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky – where employees lived?

“We were bringing about 150 people from three cultures into one space,” said Tiffany Dennison, director of accounts receivable. “Art truly makes your environment a happier place. We went to ArtsWave (a funding consortium and information clearinghouse), which gave us artists to talk to, and James really got what we wanted to do.

“He did focus groups with employees, asking, ‘What do you think of when you think of Cincinnati?’ We heard about favorite places, favorite foods, favorite memories. So we have anything from a big fireworks display to piles of chili and cheese.”

Billiter, a native who studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, has spent the last seven years capturing the essence of the city “near to my heart: nature, architecture, local culture, things I see when I’m bicycling.” He investigated places employees mentioned – he especially enjoyed finding fish-and-chip shops in the Bond Hill and Avondale neighborhoods – and incorporated one fond memory from his own childhood: the steamboat Delta Queen.

“My dad had a small runabout he’d take out on the Ohio River on special occasions,” Billiter said. “He was switching the fuel tanks one night, and suddenly a spotlight came at us out of the fog. The Delta Queen was coming straight for us! I felt like I was in a Mark Twain novel, but we managed to get out of the way.”

Billiter enlisted two painting assistants, recent University of Cincinnati graduates Gillean Dublow and Sammi Hayes, and embarked on six months’ worth of work. Over time, other students and friends dropped by to take part. They produced a 54-square-foot painting as the centerpiece for the lobby and more than a dozen others, ranging from paint on wood or stretched canvas to laser-cut, low-relief murals on wood.

“I love how these pieces showcase all the interesting and unique aspects of these areas,” said Revenue Services employee Scott Nicholson. “I have been on the floor over two years and am still noticing new things. There is even an homage to (Cincinnati-based modernist artist) Charley Harper in several pieces. Being an amateur photographer, I can really appreciate how (Billiter) frames up different landscapes and creatively arranges the symbols for that area.”

Nicholson and his cohorts have also discovered a unique alignment. Art in sections facing Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio contains landmarks from those states, and the paintings are geographically correct from west to east and north to south.

“We had coloring books made of the artwork for employees to share with their kids,” Dennison said. “Before we came, this was a trading floor full of computers, which we had to gut. Now it’s a vibrant place, and employees feel they’re a part of that.”

James Billiter’s Cityscape Prints Blend Art Deco and Victorian Ethos at Pique gallery

For local artist James Billiter, it's always skyline time.
Cincinnati CityBeat • APR 29, 2019
By JUDE NOEL
https://www.citybeat.com/arts-culture/visual-arts/article/21066512/james-billiters-cityscape-prints-blend-art-deco-and-victorian-ethos-at-pique-gallery

Victorian typography. Sleek Art Deco architecture. Millennial vibrancy. Where the Cincinnati cityscape tends to be a pastiche of industrial and post-industrial aesthetics, designer James Billiter has an eye for capturing the historical moments that comprise the whole. 

His current exhibition at Covington’s Pique gallery — which moonlights as an Airbnb — focuses on the architectural makeup of the Greater Cincinnati region. Of the prints you’ll find hanging in the lobby, many distill a neighborhood or landmark to a typeface and a head-on illustration of the building against a solid black backdrop. The defunct-but-beloved Marianne Theatre represents Bellevue, the city’s name inked in the same boxy letters that top the marquee. Carew Tower’s city block seems to jut out of the frame as Gatsby-esque fonts display the structure’s specs: “completed 1930, 49 floors, 574 ft.” 

Each of these prints is uniformly inked in shades of black and gold. 

“I think the colors unite the Victorian and the Deco era,” says Billiter, pacing the gallery in a pair of custom-made Vans that feature his own drawing of the Cincinnati skyline. “I try to use interesting inks because I love the process of printmaking. Sometimes in everyday graphic design, it’s all about digital printing, where you’d just have this interaction with the office printer, but they print 11 x 17. I love going larger and getting really experimental with the ink choices.”

That experimentation often goes beyond color and texture — many of Billiter’s prints are directly connected with their real-life counterparts. The ink used in his Fountain Square print was mixed with water scooped straight from the fountain itself. And each print of “Cincy Beer City,” a boozy tribute to the Roebling suspension bridge, contains the remnants of a flight of beer. 

Warning: Licking the print is ill-advised. 

“That’s the interesting thing with printmaking,” Billiter says. “Each one you receive is both a duplicate and an original.”

Billiter’s larger pieces almost resemble infographics, supplementing images with educational text. A map of Ohio, which isn’t hanging on the wall but is included for sale, pairs round, iconic images with fun facts about each. Kewpee Burgers’ cherubic mascot towers over Lima, a giant buckeye sprouts from Columbus and an almost obligatory cheese coney bridges the gap between Cincinnati and Covington. 

You could picture it hanging in a classroom, radiating childlike curiosity and ’70s nostalgia. 

“It’s like when you were young, there were moments in school that could really strike a passion in you. This one’s inspired by that,” he says. “And I went back, and I did all these labels around things that were in Cincinnati. From far away, you see Ohio and these colorful emblems, but down below you can live with the print and learn new things about your state.”

Billiter’s not just a native to Cincinnati — he’s also a native to design. Growing up in the ’80s, he’d watch his mother work on commercial art of her own. She worked in the age of paste-up design: Photoshop’s craftier predecessor that required artists to arrange vinyl letters and shapes on a sheet, rubbing them down to paste the work together. The sheet would be photographed, duplicated and then distributed. 

“I’m not sure if it’s nature or nurture, but my mom and I have this thing where we both go into tons of detail,” says Billiter. “Once we get into a groove, we’re almost obsessed. We can keep going.”

You can trace Billiter’s meticulous style back to 2004, when he animated a TV spot for CityBeat’s Cincinnati Entertainment Awards. The camera floats through a shadowy cityscape, sneaking through apartment windows to reveal an actor rehearsing his monologue and a band mid-practice. For a short, goofy ad, there’s an impressive amount of detail taken to flesh out the short flashes of metropolitan backdrop that appear between cuts.

This early work doesn’t just hint at Billiter’s penchant for condensing as much digestible information as possible into the canvas — it also may have subconsciously sparked his preference for black and gold. 

“I made the whole cityscape just for about one second of the actual commercial,” he says. “I had to get that overall ‘wow’ factor. But once I got into it, I really loved that escape. The passion kind of leaves a mark on your soul — even down to a color palette.”

In Pique’s back room — just outside the bedroom that guests can rent — Billiter displays his laser-cut pieces. 

A cream-colored replica of Music Hall’s Rose Window sits above the fireplace, while its miniature twin hangs on the opposite wall. A tiny cityscape spans the latter cutout — a paper piece made to simulate looking out at OTR from inside. 

His bas-relief woodcut of the skyline is the room’s best offering — smoky and multi-layered, it’s a sculpture you can’t help but imagine climbing into and permanently occupying. 

Budget-conscious art fans who’d like to take Billiter’s work home with them can take solace in the gallery’s prices. A large portion of the prints can be purchased for $10 to $30, which Billiter says helps make his work more accessible. (Prints are available for purchase at billiterstudio.com.)

“I couldn’t afford artwork when I was starting out,” he says. “It was intimidating. By being a printmaker, I could create an original piece that’s affordable in different sizes. If I can make a piece that’s $15, that’s something that a college or high school student can afford. And to break down the intimidation of owning artwork, I’ve made my artwork standard frame sizes so someone could go to a store and buy a frame the same day.”

James Billiter: Selected Works 2004-2009 will be on display at Pique (210 W. Pike St., Covington,) through May 31. More info: piquewebsite.com. 

Man of steel – and ink, and wood, and paint

Movers and Makers • June 19, 2018–
By Sue Goldberg
https://moversmakers.org/2018/06/19/artist-james-billiter/

Artist James Billiter’s sculpted bike racks rise with bursts of color against county park landscapes and remind us that everyday objects can be crafted with careful thought and infused with deeply rooted meaning. 

Great Parks Forever, a foundation partner of Great Parks, combined efforts with ArtWorks this spring to install more of Billiter’s bike racks in five locations. The 21 functional sculptures evoke themes from nature and are now in use at Sharon Woods Harbor and Sharon Centre, Winton Woods Harbor and Winton Centre, and Little Miami Golf Center at the Little Miami Scenic Trail. The first of these works, from the “Ecosystem” collection, was installed at Miami Whitewater Forest Harbor in 2016.

We spoke with Billiter to find out more about the project, and what’s next for him.*

M&M: Did ArtWorks tap you for this project? Or did you apply?

JB: I have been fortunate to work with ArtWorks Cincinnati on several projects like the #InkYourLove mini-mural campaign. I was delighted when they approached me about the Great Parks Bike Rack project because I am an avid cyclist and nature lover.  

“Ecosystem” bike racks at Sharon Woods Harbor
(Photo by James Billiter)

M&M: How did you work out the concept for “Ecosystem”? What was your inspiration?

JB: I was inspired by Great Parks of Hamilton County’s dedication to preserving nature for the enjoyment of generations to come. I was intrigued by the idea of how a flower like milkweed might help the monarch butterfly migrate – or how a beaver’s dam helps slow a river, allowing for mussels, which in turn filters the water. I have been visiting many of the Great Parks for years, and I was struck by the diversity of the ecosystems, from lakes to forests. I liked the idea of these sculptures that celebrate the diversity but also playfully allow you to interact with the animals. Some are as tall as adults, while others are perfect sizes for kids’ bikes.

Aesthetically, I was inspired by the energy and fun of “Cincinnati Story” by George Sugarcane,  which was outside of the Chiquita Building and is now at Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park – and also by Charley Harper, whose illustrations break down animals into elemental forms. He inspired me to start drawing as a child and has yet to stop inspiring me, as I have grown to appreciate his wit and storytelling.

Paintings for Duke Energy installation, Billiter Studio (Photo by James Billiter)

M&M: In addition to sculpture, you’re involved in illustration, painting and printmaking. Are you working in other areas of art as well? In what area do you find yourself spending most of your time?

JB: I really love spending a majority of time in printmaking. I am able to pair my illustrations with typography to create fine art prints. One of my favorite things about printmaking is that it allows me to share my artwork with so many people. Mediums like screen printing are so democratic, allowing me to create something very affordable for almost everyone. While I am known most for printmaking, I also paint. Last year, I had the honor of creating 17 large paintings for Duke Energy celebrating the Cincinnati community and its culture. … Recently, I have been filling sketchbooks with ideas for future sculptures and paintings.

M&M: What else is on your plate? What’s next for you? 

JB: Currently, I have two shows open. A larger collection of work is at the new Gallery 708 downtown. And I have some prints, as well as laser-cut and engraved wooden relief sculptures, on display at Grainwell in Covington through the end of June. I plan to wrap up a 114-foot mural of the history of Madisonville in July. I am also excited for future shows at Pique in April of next year, and I am planning something with Xavier University as well.