Villamagna completes mural project in Wheeling

Robert Villamagna was approached to lead a mural effort under a bridge in Wheeling.

“So I went down on the site and I was under a bridge so I thought, ‘I think there’s a fairy tale about a troll under a bridge.’” Villamagna remembers.

“So it was Three Billy Goats Gruff with this troll who lives under a bridge. And these three billy goats want to cross the bridge to get to this other pasture because their pasture is depleted. And he tells them he’s going to eat them. So there’s this story and so I thought, this is what we’re going to do.”

He continued the brightly colored fairy-tale painting theme across the road and while Villamagna is a painter, he’s known more for his found art and mixed media constructions, and most often for his tin collage assemblages.

“I do a body of work that’s just used lithograph tin. That metal comes from product containers, old signage, broken metal toys, that kind of thing. So it’s a different flavor. Together it’s made out of junk. Or junk is the primary medium. ”

Villamagna’s work has been exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Mattress Factory, the Huntington Museum of Art, the West Virginia Culture Center, and at the Tamarack, just to name a few places. He also has three works in the State of West Virginia Permanent Collection. One—a found art mixed media sculpture—is titled “the Fountain of Youth.”

Fountain of Youth - Mixed media 30” x 126” x 17”

“Several years ago I picked up an old drinking fountain. It would have been mounted on the wall of a school. The letters Y-O-U-T-H, I made them out of wood. I think they’re about 36 inches tall, and I covered them in old tin. On the U—which is the center letter—that’s where the fountain is mounted, to the bottom of the U. So this whole piece stretches across a wall probably eight feet.”

Villamagna says for him, the urge to make art began with a little encouragement at an early age. Today Villamagna himself is a teacher at West Liberty University. He says for many artists, teaching art is the next best thing to making art.

“What better thing is there than that? You’re in an environment where people are coming to learn about art—or at least you hope they are—and you’re surrounded by art supplies. What can be better than that? I don’t know! Not too much!”

It was December when Villamagna was approached to work on the mural project. It was a volunteer job so he incorporated his students and the community.

“We did get started in mid April, me and my five honors students. I went ahead and laid these things out and we painted them. We got the one side done but then school was finished so I just put out a call to folks on Facebook and said, ‘I’m goint to orchestrate this thing and direct it if you want to be part of it.’ And so I had different people come down. Some for an hour, some for two or three days. And we finished them up on Memorial Day.”