William T. Wiley, a Funk artist whose offbeat art and influential teaching practice have inspired generations of artists in the Bay Area, has died at 83. Los Angeles’s Parker Gallery, which co-represents the artist with Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, said in a newsletter on Thursday that Wiley had died on April 25. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that he had Parkinson’s disease.
During the 1960s and ’70s, Wiley’s work earned widespread admiration among a rising crop of artists intrigued by his Dada-inflected sculptures composed of unlikely ready-made objects, like logs and unclassifiable things found at salvage shops. At the same time that he was appearing in major exhibitions around the world, he was also acting as a mentor to artists who would go on to achieve stardom, including Bruce Nauman, who was his student at the University of California, Davis.
