Art School Memory: "The Danny Williams Story"

Danny Williams

The Danny Williams story -- 

As an undergraduate at SMU, I took Roger Winter's "Advanced Drawing" at least 6 or 7 semesters in a row. All the best artists at SMU were in it, so you had to re-up. 

At some point, each semester, Roger would stage a "show and tell" of masterworks that he had saved back from his "stand-out students" of years past. These were showcased, as teaching aids, as shining examples of the heights we, the current crop, should aspire to.

One of the finest of drawings was a suburban landscape by Danny Williams. It was sort of in the realm of an Edward Hopper, or perhaps a more recognizable Richard Diebenkorn "Ocean Park" landscape. Roger would wax on and on about Danny's keen eye and unparalleled light touch with drawing tools. I hadn't met Danny yet so he was more of a  "legend" than an actual person at this point. 

In short, these drawings were built up as near-unobtainable works of graphic brilliance and were gifted with rare universal praise from Roger. As a competitive young artist -- after about my third semester -- I began to jealously begrudge the DW's inevitable reappearance as a reminder of my graphic shortcomings even as I racked up the experience -- 

On occasion, Roger used to walk to his classroom from his house in University Park. Near my last semester, while carrying the small DW drawing under his arm, it seems Roger was savagely attacked by a crazed Mockingbird -- which dive-bombed and viciously pecked at him -- again and again. Roger had no choice but to smite the bird using only the framed DW drawing as a club. Whap. Whap. Whap. Thud.

When he finally straggled into class, the DW drawing had tragically slipped from its mat and was now clearly roughed-up and askew-- its once perfectly-aligned geometry now totally whopperjawed -- a literal paradigm shift caused by the bird attack had occurred. Myth-busted -- the "perfect drawing" had fallen from grace. 

Now, at last, I was free to enjoy Danny's work on a more casual basis. Now a fellow mortal, he remains a fine artist indeed.