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A.J. Meek, Portrait of Bill Hutson Next to a Window, c. 1981, sepia photograph, 11 x 14 inches. Artwork courtesy of the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College. All rights reserved.
About Bill Hutson
Bill Hutson was born in 1936 in the Dunbar neighborhood in San Marcos. His father, who sadly passed away when Hutson was a young child, was a local musician and his mother was a custodian at Southwest Texas State Teachers College (now Texas State University). Hutson's life as an artist started when, as a teenager, he responded to an advertisement in the newspaper that said, "Draw Me." Hutson entered and won a spot in an art correspondence course to learn how to draw cartoons. This experience lead him to submit a cartoon to the San Marcos Daily Paper, which was published, much to Hutson's surprise.
Hutson would later serve in the Air Force before returning to art in 1960. He attended the San Francisco Academy of Art to study commercial art. Hutson was warned that he would struggle to find work in commercial art because of his skin color, so he began creating art as an expression instead of as a means of work.
New York City was his next stop, but he spent a lot of time moving and traveling around the world. Travelling introduced him to other notable artists. It was his time living in Holland where he began to move in a circle of African-American abstract expressionists.
Hutson's artwork has been in many museum and gallery exhibitions both internationally and throughout the United States. A large collection of his art was donated to Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where he is currently the Jennie Brown Cook and Betsy Hess Cook Distinguished Artist-in-Residence.
Artists Kathryn Welch and Sondra Kretchmar of River City Glassworks in front of their stained-glass piece that pays homage to Bill Hutson's Painting "Homecoming" that can be viewed at the San Marcos Public Library.
An Homage to Bill Hutson in Stained-Glass
Bill Hutson's painting Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers (1979–1990) draws on memories of his family’s shotgun house at 733 Center Street. Its form recalls a home filled with resilience and fragility—no doors or windows, a suspended roof—paired with symbols honoring African and Native American heritage in the region, the labor of home life, and the paradoxes of the American homesteading ideal.
Throughout his career, Hutson experimented with form, color, and texture, but stained glass was one medium he always hoped to explore. Homestead Revisited, based on the artwork of Bill Hutson, commissioned by the City of San Marcos Arts Commission, fulfills that wish posthumously. Local glass artists Sondra Kretschmar and Kathryn Welch of River City Glassworks reinterpreted Homestead for stained glass, adapting its composition for the medium’s luminous, light-filled surface. While the original painting is grounded in blacks, purples, blues, and greens, the artists expanded their palette, drawing on the full range of brilliant primary colors found throughout Hutson’s oeuvre to better convey his energy and the spirit of the work in stained glass.
The resulting window honors both Hutson’s artistic legacy and his enduring ties to San Marcos. Illuminated by natural light, it transforms his remembered “homestead” into a radiant beacon for the community—a place where history, memory, and creativity meet. This beautiful art piece can be viewed at the San Marcos Public Library, 625 E. Hopkins St., San Marcos, TX.
Join us for the dedication!
Sunday, August 31
4:00-5:00pm
San Marcos Public Library, 625 E. Hopkins St.
A reception featuring music, light refreshments, and meet and greet with the artists will be held in the lobby of the Library, followed by a brief presentation and viewing of the artwork.
