Born in 1901 in Huntsville, Alabama, William Dawson was raised on his grandfather's horse farm. In 1923, he moved to Chicago and made a thirty-five-year career as a well-regarded manager of operations at the E. E Aron Company, a wholesale produce distributor located on South Water Market.

A man of the city with rural roots, Dawson turned to artmaking in his retirement years, taking adult education classes in ceramics and metalwork at a senior center, before gravitating to wood carving and painting. "I just see something lying in the street and I know it could be turned into something…I don't know what I'm going to do when I pick up a piece of wood, but the longer I look at it, it comes to me."

Dawson thrived on the praise his ...