Billie Lawless

Years later in a 2014 interview, when Lawless was asked if he would bring the Green Lightning sculpture back to Buffalo, he replied "Any time".

Lawless was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Buffalo, New York. His interest in art was fostered by the presence of the Albright–Knox Art Gallery nearby, and a by sculptor Larry Griffis, who was a friend of the family. Lawless was a rower and in 1967 he stroked the first Senior Heavyweight crew to win the American and Canadian Schoolboy National Championships (Canadian Secondary School Rowing Association) in the same year. In his senior year of high school he represented the United States at the World Rowing Championships held in the Netherlands, competing in the straight four. Rowing has remained a constant in his life through college as a coach at the West Side Rowing Club.

Between the photographs and leading toward the center of the installation (a broken crucifix on a funeral pyre) were spermlike images composed of yellow paint pigment. Following these images toward the center were multicolored, silkscreened, folded rats that started amassed from one wall in a corner of the gallery. The broken crucifix approximately 8' wide and 10' long and 2' high and composed of sheet metal rested on a funeral pyre of ascending railroad ties. Inside this crucifix in each corner was a small television set which had a looping video that dealt with a carefully chosen metaphor referring to genocide. The cover of this crucifix was 1/4" Lexan, painted with images of babies in severed sections. Crisscrossed and also inside were the words BROASTED and BABIES in a light blue neon. According to Lawless this installation dealt with the subject of 2000 years of genocide as perfected by mankind.

In 1994 Lawless married Svetlana Schreiber, an immigration attorney, in Cleveland, Ohio and originally of Sighetu Marmației, Romania. He has two stepsons who reside in New York City.

In the Spring of 1993 Green Lightning was accepted into an exhibition to be held at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center in New York, New York. The exhibition was sponsored by the Association of Independent Artists and curated by John Rosis and Glenn Reed (See prospectus for this exhibition). When the Director of the Center (Michael Ford) voiced his objections to the sculpture both curators (artists living in New York City) attempted to pressure Lawless into submitting another piece. Lawless refused and the American Civil Liberties Union initiated litigation.

In 1992 a jury in the New York State Supreme Court ruled that the Mayor of the City of Buffalo James D. Griffin and the City of Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency had violated Lawless' civil rights with its unauthorized actions in 1984.

Broasted Babies Brew Ha Ha - was first shown at SPACES in Cleveland, Ohio in March 1989. It was exhibited again at CAGE in Cincinnati Ohio in the Fall of 1992. It is a full gallery installation that involved repainting the walls of the gallery a bright pink and which were then layered with stencils, enlarged photocopied recipes with alterations by Lawless, and tri-fold silkscreened plastic panels that had animated swinging babies. On the floor Lawless laid out enlarged images from original photographs of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. These photographs were purchased from the National Archives which included full usage of the copyright. Between and on top of these photographs were laid icons that incorporated images repeatedly used by Lawless in his work set in decorated rat traps.

Armed with inspiration in the form of Walter Kendrick's The Secret Museum and Walker Percy's The Message in the Bottle, books dealing with the history of pornography, its suppression, and the nature of language and man, Lawless created a multimedia installation at SPACES (Cleveland), a key work in the Uncensored exhibit in 1987. Although smaller than Green Lightning this work confronted many of the same issues, resurrected the offending "images", and incorporated video technology.

From the title down to the sources for the video clips, Lawless rips political statements out of their contexts and illuminates them with biting irony. Judge Potter Stewart's infamous inadequate definition of pornography forms the title. Passages from the 1986 Meese Report lifted verbatim from banned films and books were used—titillating material, considering it is a government document. A Mozart string quartet and quotes from Albert Einstein and Susan Sontag were also included on scrolling text. Lawless juxtaposes the "safest, most conservative music—that of Mozart—with scenes from The Devil and Miss Jones, and comments on the frequent censorship in art as compared to music and science.

In 1984 Lawless created the sculpture titled Green Lightning which was placed in the Midtown Corridor of Buffalo, New York.

Green Lightning was originally conceived as a project at Artpark, Lewiston, New York for the 1983 season. It was subsequently erected in Buffalo, New York in 1984 and heavily damaged a week after its unveiling by the City of Buffalo and City of Buffalo Arts Commission (Director, David More.) Its total destruction was prevented when Lawless drove down to where the sculpture had been unveiled and climbed atop the 30-foot structure in an attempt to prevent workers from cutting it down. He later obtained a court order halting the destruction which had begun by the City under the cloak of darkness well after the Courts had closed. Lawless was one of eight artists accepted to exhibit at Sculpture Chicago '85 in the Spring of 1985. The jurors, Howard Fox of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mary Jane Jacobs of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and John Chandler, Director of Supervision, Art Consultancy and Management, Boston, selected Lawless' Green Lightning which was subsequently installed at Harrison and Wells Streets in the South Loop. It stood for five years with no controversy.

From 1980 to 1982 Lawless attended SUNY at Buffalo studying with Duayne Hatchett and George Smith. In June 1982 he received his MFA degree from SUNYAB. Unrelated to the pursuit of his graduate degree Lawless built and installed Cock-a-doodle-doo at the State University College of Buffalo (Buffalo State College) directly across the street from the Albright–Knox Art Gallery with a dedication in May 1982.

Between the years of 1970 and 1972 Lawless actively fought against the war in Vietnam. He was involved in litigation with his local draft board. Board officials arbitrarily removed his student status and made him available to the draft, so he claimed conscientious objector status. Lawless litigated and won a decision in New York State Supreme Court.

He attended Rutgers College, New Brunswick, New Jersey from 1968 to 1970 and from 1972 to 1974 when he graduated with a BFA degree. At Rutgers College Lawless studied with Bob Cook, Livingston College and Mel Edwards at Rutgers.

Billie Lawless (born July 16, 1950) is an American sculptor.