Was born 6/7/34 in Dodge City, Kansas (no gifts please).

His first painting show, with many to follow, was at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1958. A short list of gallery affiliations after Ferus include Mizuno, Margo Leavin, Nicholas Wilder, and James Corcoran in Los Angeles, Martha Jackson and Acquavella in New York, Texas Gallery in Houston, and Neuendorf in Germany. Recent specific shows have been organized by the Danese Gallery (2001) and Franklin Parrasch Gallery (2005) in NYC. He is now aligned with Samuel Freeman.

His first retrospective exhibition in 1968 was organized and shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (youngest artist granted this distinction), and traveled to The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada. His second retrospective exhibition in 1988 was co-organized by the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , and traveled to The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu and The Oakland Museum in California.

Other solo exhibits include Motel Dracula (maybe a first for lithographs) at the San Francisco Museum of Art which traveled to the Pasadena Art Museum, and Watercolors at The Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (same). He has also been included in numerous group and too many theme museum exhibitions throughout the world.

Works held in public collections include the Whitney, Guggenheim and Museum of Modern Art in New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Museum of Fine Art and The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Art Gallery of Ontario in Canada, and Beauborg in Paris.

Public commissions include the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and the Ronald Reagan State Building in Los Angeles. He has been a recipient of many grants including the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant and the first National Endowment of Art Grant. He has written articles published in Art Forum and Art in America.

For fun, he curated and installed "Speed Sculpture" (1968 ; the first exhibition of motorcycles at a museum) at Pomona College Art Gallery, and installed exhibitions for Laguna Art Museum, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Orange County Museum of Art in California, and was especially honored to do H.C. Westermann's 2002 retrospective at MOCA in Los Angeles.

Billy Al is retired, doing all the things one shouldn't do while retired. Eventually, he plans on having a show of all the things he didn't do while retired. And, he's built and ditched a studio in Victoria, British Columbia.
But what for? To get back to the source: VENICE CA 90291.

Please don't forget about MoontangKilns.com

Was a smart ass. And still is.