Who's Who: Bill Zindel, Artist and Graphic Designer

Name: Bill Zindel

Age: 44

Occupation: Graphic designer and artist

How long have you been an artist? Kind of always. I went to art school at Rhode Island School of Design in the 1980s. I work as a graphic designer and I make websites. I've always made art in my spare time.

What sort of art do you make? For the past few years, I've been making collages from vintage materials, mostly old magazines. I've been working on a pretty small scale, and most recently I've used a lot more geometric designs.

How has your art changed over the years? I think it's gotten more focused and a little bit more planned out. I used to kind of just jump in and it was a little more free-form. In school I was very influenced by naïve art and children's art. Now it's a little more controlled. I'm not throwing paint around anymore.

What are your influences? My work has always been inspired by contemporary collage artists like Kurt Schwitters and Robert Rauschenberg, even when I wasn't working with collage. More recently there have been a lot of artists working in collage that I've found through Flickr. I'm not sure why, but collage artists in particular often use Flickr to share their work and trade pieces through the mail.

Tell me more about the . There are five of us, and I only really knew Wendell and his wife Robin. This is our first show, and Wendell Jones has the sculpture. Aaron is a pretty established artist in San Francisco and he does these beautiful abstract paintings on metal with oil or acrylic. Robin paints and makes quilts and does a little bit of everything. Sarah has a company called Lucky Space Monkey and she makes these space-monkey-type dolls and accessories. I'll be showing collages. I'm going to DJ.

What do you spin? I have a collection of 45's that I've been amassing for a while. I'm probably going to annoy everyone because I have a bunch of country music, some easy listening stuff. I also have a bunch of 1960s, 1970s rock and funk and disco. A little bit of everything.

How did you meet the other artists here? Wendell I've known for a long time since we both hung out at this warehouse on 3rd Street in San Francisco. We were in a group show there together, maybe 10 or 15 years ago. But I've been seeing more of him since he's moved to El Sobrante.

You work as a graphic designer as well? Well, I actually quit my job at a design agency in San Francisco about two years ago. I wanted to focus more on my art and putting my stuff out there a little bit more. This gallery is part of that. I tend to only show stuff when people ask me, so I'm trying to take control of that a little bit more.

What brought you to El Cerrito? My wife and I lived in San Francisco and about seven years ago we wanted to buy a house. We were looking in Berkeley and Oakland, but our real estate agent kept saying, “El Cerrito, El Cerrito...” We thought it was a little far, but she convinced us and now we love it.