One And One

Zeke Willaims

Moncrief Cancer Institute

February 21 – May 12, 2022

Moncrief Cancer Institute in partnership with the Texas Christian University School of Art presents One And One, a solo show featuring work by Zeke Willaims. It will be on view from February 21^st through May 12^th, 2022. The Moncrief Cancer Institute is not open to the public for regular exhibition hours due to COVID-19 restrictions, however, this exhibition is available virtually at https://linktr.ee/moncriefartgallery.

These paintings started as images created using the Noby Noby Boy iOS app. The Noby Noby Boy app was a small offshoot of a semi-popular video game for the PlayStation 3 of the same name, developed by Keita Takahashi. Takahashi is more famous for the game Katamari Damacy. The Noby Noby Boy game was a large collaboration, where all the users would work together to stretch a character to reach out to nearby planets in our solar system. All the players’ efforts were added together to accomplish this goal. It became clear after a few months that by simply playing the game, the collective would never be able to reach Pluto and head back to the Sun. The iOS app was created as an off-shoot of the original game,  and any distance traveled by the app users was added to the in-game total. However, it still took six years for the game to reach its conclusion. Because of the main in-game goal of collectively reaching for the planets, I chose to title the pieces in this series using a list of minor planets from Wikipedia.

This game was particularly important to my wife Melissa and me as it was an activity we would do together regularly. When the iOS app came out, we would often make drawings together and sometimes even let our cat play, too. The game no longer works in the current iOS but we have saved an original iPad with the game installed and periodically boot it up to make drawings.

The drawings from the Noby Noby Boy iOS app are processed in Adobe Illustrator to create a composition that is then filled with patterns and colors, both native to Illustrator and created from scratch. They are then printed onto two 3 x 4 foot canvases with an inkjet printer and then joined with mending plates to reach their final size.

Moncrief Cancer Institute provides Tarrant County and surrounding communities with the foremost science, resources, and programs to reduce the threat and impact of cancer. The partnership between Moncrief Cancer Institute and the TCU School of Art celebrates the vital relationship between art and medicine and how art positively impacts the patient experience. TCU graduate students are selected to participate as guest curators and then mentored through the exhibition-making process by staff of The Art Galleries at TCU. 

Moncrief Cancer Institute Contact: Tracy Greene

Manager, Marketing and Communications 

400 W. Magnolia Ave., Fort Worth, TX 76104 

817-288-9803, tracy.greene@moncrief.com