(September 2, 1917 – April 9, 1983)
William Dole was born in 1917 in Angola, Indiana to his postmaster father, W. Earl Dole and his mother, Edna Cowen Dole. Throughout his adolescence, Dole was enthralled by the reproductions of artworks embedded in the pages of women’s magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal and Vanity Fair. From highschool he was offered scholarships to the John Herron Art School and Olivet College. Dole chose to further his education at Olivet and studied English Literature. He also apprenticed under George Rickey, receiving a degree in Art History and went on to receive his teaching credentials in art. It was during the 1940s that Dole enrolled in art classes at Mills College in Oakland, California were he met and married his wife, Kate Holcomb Dole in 1941. Soon after his marriage to Kate, Dole was enlisted in the army where he was given a position teaching art to fellow cadets.
With three children and an end to his war duties, Dole attempted a job as a commercial artist for Virgil A. Advertising. He quickly changed his mind when he entered graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley in the summer of 1946. It was here that he continued on for two years as a lecturer in the Arts Department. During these years Dole began professionally exhibiting his work. In 1949, he took on a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1955 he took sabbatical from the college in order to take his family to Florence, Italy for two years. Enthused by a leather journal filled with scraps of paper, Dole diverged on his path of watercolors and began creating collages inspired by Italian landscapes.
Returning to the United States, the artist was appointed Department Chairman in 1958 and went on to become a full time professor in 1962. Collage quickly became his medium and developed interest in the work of George Braque, Kurt Schwitters (1887- 1948) and Joseph Cornell (1903-1972). Throughout the 1950s, Dole’s exhibited in Berlin, Mexico City, Rome, and London. At this time, Dole was appointed Department Chairman in 1971 until 1974. The “William Dole Retrospective 1960-1975” Exhibition traveled from 1976 from the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Dole was also awarded with an honorary degree as a Doctor of Fine Arts by Olivet College in 1978 and continued working till his death in Santa Barbara in the year 1983.