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Photographs by Dilip Vishwanat

William Perry, Central Visual & Performing Arts High School

Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced Visual Arts

William Perry is not a mover or a shaker. Call him, instead, a dreamer of dreams. Perry came toSt. Louis in 1976 and has been here ever since, dreaming ambitious dreams for his students and humble ones for himself. In a fickle, epicurean art world, he lives and articulates a stoic philosophy of career: “I never had any idea how I would make a living; I just knew I wanted to paint—so I tell my kids [meaning his students], ‘Commit yourself to art, and the opportunities will come.’”

Opportunities have come, for his students and for Perry himself. At 3 p.m. every day, when he’s “a free man,” he goes home to his studio to draw and paint commissioned pieces.

He finds the schedule nourishing: “I’m constantly talking about art, thinking about art. I’m drawing and painting all the time to show the kids how. Art is like music; you have to practice to do it well. When I teach, I practice all day long.”

In personal student-teacher relation-ships, Perry maintains perspective. For someone who refers to “my kids” with all the protective instinct of a good father, he practices surprising detachment after their graduation: “I tell them, ‘Don’t come crawling around here. Concentrate on getting a life for yourself.’” Not that he shuns contact with the up-and-coming graphic designers, museum curators, art-institute students and Fulbright scholars he once taught—instead, self-effacing, he asks students to pursue excellence first.

“I want students to get on a track where they can take their talent and do something with it,” he says. “When I can help one of my kids get a break, an award, a scholarship, an acceptance—anything that puts them on that track—I feel like that’s my greatest success, so every year I try to make sure that happens.”