Fred Robert Wilson (1932-2012) was an important African American artist and art instructor who taught sculpture at Golden Oak Adult School in the 1960s and guided community arts organizations in Val Verde and Newhall before relocating in 1975 to Albuquerque where he founded the New Mexico African American Artists' Guild and won the state Governor's Award in 2007.
Wilson started teaching sculpture in spring 1966 at the "Golden Oak School of Adult Education," as it was called. With no permanent home, classes were held at Hart District campuses across the valley. Wilson taught at Hart High. Students made clay heads from their life model — the aging historian A.B. "Art" Perkins, whose chiseled face was described as "a challenge" (ibid., March 17, 1966).
Wilson helped get the Golden Oak Art Association off the ground in Newhall in 1966. When his landlord decided to sell his Val Verde studio property (ibid., November 11, 1965), Wilson relocated his family within the Santa Clarita Valley and opened a new studio, the Muddy Wheel Gallery, in Van Nuys in 1968.
"My greatest inspirations come from dreams and from observing people and animals in my daily environment," he would write. He reinterpreted "cultural, symbolic and mythical stories" into large-scale sculptures, masks and pots, often with stylized faces, as well as two-dimensional wall murals made of rolled-out clay that he cut into tiles, fired and framed. He frequently incorporated wood, stained glass, feathers, shells and beads into his one-of-a-kind creations.*
The 1970s would bring major change. In 1975, Wilson relocated his gallery to Albuquerque, which he termed "a land for dreamers" (Albuquerque Tribune, 1990). In 1978 he was commissioned to produce fountains and murals for homes and businesses in New Mexico but suffered a stroke that left him with Bell's palsy. He was back in action in 1979.
Despite — or perhaps because of — his personal philosophy that "there is no such thing as Black art, there are only Black artists" (Albuquerque Journal, February 14, 1988), he co-founded the New Mexico African American Artists' Guild as part of his effort to heighten awareness in a state known primarily for its Anglo, Latino and Indigenous populations.