William A. Hall

1943 - 2019

William A Hall was born in Los Angeles in 1943. Hall’s paternal grandfather T. Victor Hall (1979-1965) was a commercial artist in New York. Hall himself, while self-taught, took basic art classes in elementary school and always wanted to be an artist. He lived with his mother until she passed away in 1997, and then became homeless. “In kindergarten, I made a Baltimore Oriole out of aluminum foil,” he recalled in an interview with Hyperallergic. “My first love was sculpture. When I got put out on the street, I couldn’t make sculpture anymore. In the streets, you have a whole different mindset.” Living as a homeless person in Los Angeles for 18 years and using old Cadillacs, a Buick and a Dodge for his art studios, Hall would sit in the driver’s seat drawing sometimes for 12 hours at a stretch every day. He would prop his sketchpad against the steering wheel and work from imagination with colored pencils and crayons, creating alternate realities containing retro-futuristic vehicles gliding through gnarly Middle-earth-like environments. Curiously, there are no figures behind the wheels of Hall’s outrageous machines, thus inviting the viewer to take a vicarious spin through his world of rocky roads embedded with serpentine tree roots and vines, threatened by impending precipices and occasionally washed by the majestic blue waves of the Pacific Ocean. Despite their eccentric appearance, the cars themselves are rugged, all-terrain vehicles designed to be driven by an adventurous day-tripper. Hall created several series of drawings in which many separate 11 x 8.5 inch sheets of paper combine to create a single scene. William A. Hall’s first exhibition at Andrew Edlin Gallery was in collaboration with Henry Boxer Gallery (UK). - From Andrew Edlin Gallery