Bill Wilhelmi began his artistic training by taking every art course offered at San Diego State College from 1956 to 1960. The artist spent three years in the Navy, where he said he spent most of his time decorating officers’ clubs, and after his discharge enrolled in a graduate program at UCLA. The art that Wilhelmi creates demonstrates a conscious movement away from the Japanese-influenced style that he was taught at school, and a development of a design that expresses his roots in Texas.