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William C. Houston
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| I was born in 1951. I grew up in New Market, Tennessee as an only
child. I have had a lifelong interest in art. I am the son of
artist Basier Houston, who was a 1932 student at the Washington
School of Fine and Applied Arts, and an artist and cartoonist
throughout the 1930's and 1940's. My mother was an elementary
school teacher for 30 years, a Girl Scout Golden Eaglet, a United
States Navy Petty Officer from 1942 to 1945, and a 1950 graduate
Of Carson-Newman College. I participated in the Tennessee Arts Commission "Artist in the Schools" program from 1974 to 1975. From 1975 until 1978, I was a high school teacher at Jefferson County Consolidated High School. Since 1974 I have been an instructor at Carson-Newman College, and have been the Artist-in-Residence at the college since 1984. Along with being a college professor, I also own and operate Houston's Mineral Water, a seventy-year-old water works that is the source of drinking water famous in the East Tennessee area. It is a family business that began in 1931, and it still produces hundreds of gallons of water daily. Sold from a very unusual facility in New Market, the water is renowned for its pleasant taste and curative properties. The location of the well was revealed to my grandfather in a vision while he was dying of kidney disease. The water was sold as a medicine in the 1930's and 1940's. I am also the great, great, great nephew of Sam Houston, who was the Governor of Tennessee, President of the Texas Republic, leader of the Texas Army and War of Independence from Mexico, and the Governor of Texas. My life also has connections to the state of Maine, which is my mother's original home. All of my summers were spent in Maine until the 1980's. Bailey Island on Casco Bay was the site of the family cottage which at high tide was 10 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. This was the source of many paintings in my early formative years. |
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