William P. Daley was my teacher, my boss, my mentor and friend.
I met Bill in 1964 at the Philadelphia College of Art, where he taught basic design and color to my freshman class section. He was the most challenging, encouraging, entertaining – and confounding – of all teachers I had ever known, or have known since.
Bill’s weekly assignments generated intense work as we competed to impress him, while at the same time exploring concepts of design and color theory that most of us aspiring artists had never considered.
He had a way of presenting his assignments that jolted us into responses that stretched our imaginations and caused us to try all kinds of image-making, materials use, conceptual articulation, art history researching, word puzzling, and rituals of process aimed at bringing ideas to reality. His classes were always stimulating; far beyond the basic assignment-and-critique format.
I remained a student of Bill’s for my entire time at PCA, graduating in 1969. He was my primary teacher as a major in the ceramics program, as one of hundreds of students Bill taught in his span of time there – more than 32 years. We were all profoundly influenced by his attention to us and his ways of conveying a myriad of concepts, while demanding the best professional practice. In the years since, I have spoken with numerous artists who have similar memories of their time as Bill’s students, and he remained endeared to them for waking a creative spark that has sustained us in our work as professional artists.
Once during the late 1970s, I asked Bill to join me as a visiting artist to address a sculpture class I taught at Massachusetts College of Art & Design. Bill sat on a tall stool in the front of the classroom wearing a folded newspaper “printer’s hat” he had made before the students arrived. When the class had assembled, I introduced Bill. He looked around silently for a minute or so, which puzzled us all. Then he said, “Thank you for inviting me, I’ve just been released.” With a demonic smile on his face, he stared at one or two of the students, then me, then jumped off the stool and retrieved a stack of opened newspapers he had placed on the floor. He gave each student a sheet, then began to instruct them on the craft of making their own hats.
He had completely disarmed them, ridding them of preconceived notions of routine teaching. When they were all wearing their new paper hats, he continued by showing slides of ancient objects and discussed symbols common to diverse cultures, explaining why he found them fascinating. He showed and discussed his own art for about 45 minutes, then asked them to begin drawing, and had each develop a symbol, or multiple symbols, that represented some aspect of their upbringing and their own cultural background. He went from student to student and enthusiastically encouraged them to push further, to try things they hadn’t yet considered, and to explore their imaginations. Eventually the class was working with corrugated cardboard and tape to build larger 3-D versions of their drawn forms. Everyone was deeply engaged in the work. The Bill Daley visit became a memorable highlight of the semester. Bill had many such presentation quirks, gaining attention by odd actions, and brought his audience into more focused listening to the thoughts he wanted to convey.
