By Zirrus VanDevere, for the Redoubt Reporter
William Harper leads life-drawing sessions at the Kenai Fine Arts Center.
William Harper was basically in Utah just long enough to be born, and was raised in Alaska, both in Dillingham and then on the Kenai Peninsula. Harper has a very matter-of-fact style to his personality, and seems to be a planner. He attended Kenai Peninsula College’s Kenai River Campus and also the University of Alaska Fairbanks, achieving a bachelor’s degree.
Instructors in both schools were able to impart some critical skills, and Harper is most 
thankful for the critiquing knowledge as well as the business savvy that Miho Aoki at UAF and Celia Anderson at KPC offered. He said that Anderson was always able to find something he could improve on because of her large amount of previous experience and her innate intelligence.
Each school had a small art department, so critiques could be quite thorough. Interestingly, he found KPC to inhabit a broader-minded approach to art making. Gary Freeburg taught him a lot about finding beauty in surprising places, and about recognizing that art can be confrontational and meaningful and rich and varied.
Harper will eventually attend more schooling, he said, thinking a place like Nevada might have all of the elements he feels are necessary for success in his chosen field. He calculates that it is an area where supply and demand are not at odds, and where he can gain access to more metropolitan areas without the intense competition for which some of the biggest cities allow. He will likely focus on graphic design or scientific 
illustration, and plans to do what is needed in order to ensure that art will be his life.
Even as a child, Harper loved to draw. Today he sees the discipline as a way to sort of re-render what his mind perceives in the world, and is intrigued by the way attitude and also the tonal quality is evident in his drawings.
Even when artists work abstractly, he feels, as I do, that competence in drawing is primary to an artist’s ability to add something to the world.
Once an artist is capable in the discipline of seeing what is really there, he or she is then free to abstract and change the rules of engagement as desired.
Harper and an associate have started offering life-drawing sessions at the Kenai Fine Arts Center that are open to adults and cost only $5 per event. If there is enough interest, they may continue with the sessions in the fall. Artists meet on Thursdays, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Scheduled sessions at this point are July 29, Aug. 12 and Aug. 26.
Zirrus VanDevere is a local mixed-media artist and owns Art Works gallery in Soldotna. She has bachelor’s degrees in fine arts and education.
