Pilgrim - a.k.a. Pilgrim's Progress

William T. Wiley

William T. Wiley has included the poem "Pilgrim" by Michael Hannon in this lithograph, which reads: "In my dream it's no dream. / These are the first hours of the end. / Art begins to abandon its creature. / I am crossing a familiar unknown. / A pilgrim in the music who wins / because there is nothing left to lose."

Four years after the creation of this lithograph, Wiley and Hannon would collaborate on a portfolio of poems and etchings titled Pilgrim's Progress, in an edition of 20 published by Flying Horse Editions/Hoopsnake Press, Orlando, FL.

William T. Wiley, influential painter, printmaker, sculptor, and educator, was born in Bedford, Indiana on October 21, 1937. His family moved to Texas and Washington state when Wiley was a child, settling in the latter when he was a teen. After graduation he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, earning his B.F.A. degree in 1960 and his M.F.A. degree in 1962. After taking a position on the faculty of the University of California, Davis art department the following year, he embarked on his path toward establishing the Funk art scene with fellow Bay Area artists Roy DeForest and Robert Arneson. A multi-disciplinary artist, he worked in a broad range of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, film, and music.

Wiley exhibited frequently throughout the U.S. and abroad. Major exhibitions included: the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1960 (first solo show); Venice Biennial, 1980; Whitney Biennial, 1983; H. de Young Memorial Museum, 1996; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2005; Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2009 - 2010 (retrospective); among many others. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, University of Nevada at Reno, Washington State College in Pullman, University of California at Berkeley, School of Visual Arts in New York, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was Associate Professor at the University of California at Davis between 1963 and 1973.

During his Smithsonian American Art Museum retrospective, Eric Denker, director of the Corcoran Gallery and one of the show's collaborators, wrote, "There is an innate directness to Wiley’s work … he applies his inherent wit and creativity to basic materials to explore very humanistic themes. Wiley’s assured draftsmanship and quiet humor draw us into his world, where we pause to marvel at the metamorphosis of symbols and words and images."

William T. Wiley died on April 25, 2021 in Marin County, California.