Whether truth or madness, Wally Hedrick's voice is certainly that of a prophet in the more general sense of the word, for he is a denouncer of the evils of the world around him, calling for a return to Humanity and a renunciation of worldly things for spiritual Wally Hedrick's Black Paintings appear at one of the most important and turbulent junctures of history, at the beginning of the Unamerican Empire which is currently and radically transforming the fabric of life in the USA and the world, creating totally new and alien problems with which the old world cannot cope. Hence, with I revolution was in the air, flamed by the violent US militarism, Hedrick leads those with a visionary bent (like Blake) to see the signs of apocalypse in world events, when all mankind would break free of their shackles and arise to overthrow tyranny in all its hideous forms. As an artist and mystic, Wally takes the stance of a radical visionary against the established order of his time. Hedrick is a type which is never in tune with the times; but one can hardly imagine a century he more definitely opposed, point by point, to everything in which he was surrounded by. The corollary is equally true, that no age needed him more. But of course it never heard him.
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About the Author: An heir to the West Coast and Beat generation art, LG Williams is the youngest member of the Rat Bastard Protective Association, whose membership included Bruce Connor, Wally Hedrick, Jay DeFeo, and Manuel Neri. Williams received his M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis - nearly twenty years after the school's most famous graduate Bruce Nauman. He has showed at many national and international venues, among them The Internet Pavilion of La Biennale Di Venezia 2011, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, di Rosa Art Preserve, Klaipedos Kultury Komunikacijy Centras, Ludwig Forum Aachen, Super Window Project, Gloria Maria Gallery, Lance Fung Gallery, and Steven Wirtz Gallery.
Reviews featuring Williams have appeared in Artforum, Art Issues, Art Week, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, La Stampa, Japan Times, Huffington Post, Purple.fr, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Maui Weekly, Java Magazine, and Glass Magazine. Art historian Thomas Frangenberg (University of Leicester), wrote the catalogue essay for Anthology: 1985-2012, Williams' mid-career retrospective in Milan; and Donald Preziosi (University of California Los Angeles), featured Williams' artwork in his 2014 monograph Art, Religion, Amnesia: The Enchantments of Credulity (Routledge).
Williams curated Wally Hedrick's War Room for The 2003 San Francisco International Art Fair, the first time this "significant item of Bay Area art history" had been exhibited since 1967. In 2009 Cengage Learning / Wadsworth published Williams's Drawing Upon Art: A Workbook for Gardner's Art Through the Ages - an innovative pedagogical tool designed to facilitate learning art history through drawing. During 2010-11 Williams was the art critic for The Tokyo Weekender, the oldest free English publication in Japan. In 2016, Williams' publishing house PCP Press released Dave Hickey's Wasted Words and Dust Bunnies compiled and edited by art historian Julia Friedman.
Williams has taught studio art, art history, art appreciation, and graphic design courses since 1990 with programs such as The University of California, Davis, University of Southern California, California College of the Arts, Arizona State University, and The University of Hawaii.
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