SAN MARCOS LIBRARY
More than 200 people packed the San Marcos library lobby last Sunday to celebrate the dedication of “Homestead Revisited,” a stained glass piece by Sondra Kretschmar and Kathryn Welch. The work was inspired by San Marcos native Bill Hutson’s painting “Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers.”
Now installed in front of an east-facing window of the fiction and non-fiction room/reading area of the library, “Homestead Revisited” is the culmination of a collaboration between the library, the San Marcos Arts Commission and the Calaboose African American History Museum.
The dedication ceremony featured remarks by “Homestead Revisited” creators Kretschmar and Welch of River City Glassworks, and an overview of the project by San Marcos Arts Commission Chair Kelly King-Green. Members of the Calaboose African American History Museum board as well as several of Bill Hutson’s relatives were in attendance to commemorate the occasion. Live music was provided by Siren Strings.
Mayor Jane Hughson proclaimed the Aug. 19, 2025 as “Bill Hutson Day” and called upon the San Marcos community to “honor an artist whose work bridges his San Marcos origin and his international legacy in this new stained glass window at the San Marcos library.”
“I think it’s fantastic and I’m honored to have it in the library,” said Hughson.
Bill Hutson was born in 1936 in San Marcos at the family’s “shotgun” house on Center Street across from where the Dunbar Community Center stands now. In 1942, his musician father, Floyd Waymon Hutson, died of influenza. The elder Hutson had been a go-to entertainer at local meetings as well as a leader in the Black community.
After the death of Hutson’s father, his mother, Mattie Edwards Hutson, worked to support the family as a custodian at Southwest Texas State Teachers College. Hutson learned to draw cartoons in his teens; the San Marcos Daily Record published one of his cartoons when he was 15.
In 1952, after three years of illness, much of it in the Gary Air Force Base Hospital, Hutson’s mother passed away. He and his siblings were immediately taken to live with his mother’s sister in San Antonio, but his childhood in San Marcos continued to influence his artwork throughout his career.
Hutson died in Sept. of 2022, after his works were shown in a city-wide show in San Marcos earlier in the year, including exhibitions at Texas State, the Price Center, the Walkers’ Gallery, the Calaboose African American History Museum and the San Marcos library.
Diane Insley, director of the library from 2015 to 2025, said that the San Marcos Activity Center initially planned to show Hutson paintings during the city-wide show, but a water main burst, forcing the show to relocate to the library.
Insley later worked with Hutson to plan a stained glass installation at the library, which Hutson initially planned to complete himself, reviewing the library building plans during the construction phase and choosing the location where “Homestead Revisited” is now installed.
“We had this new library building to go into, we went ahead and talked to Bill, who had always planned to do the glass himself,” Insley said. “But he ran out of time to do that.”
Hutson would have loved “Homestead Revisited” according to his niece Colette Wilkinson, who said the bright colors of the glass work are a better reflection of his personality than the darker tones on the Hutson work which inspired it.
“I know the first word he would say when he saw this would be ‘fantastic,’” Wilkinson said. “That is his phrase … This stained glass is more of a vision of him. I feel like he was always bright and colorful and full of that light and joy.”
Michelle Burleson, vice president of the Calaboose African American History Museum, said the colors of “Homestead Revisited” remind her of her childhood in the Dunbar neighborhood.
“I’m looking at this and it’s breathtaking,” Burleson said. “A lot of memories come back, pretty much because of the colors. That blue-gray looking color, there were houses in the neighborhood of that color that were close to Bill’s home. The Green was like the greenery, all of the beautiful trees.
“When I saw this reddish orange color that reminds me so much of the pomegranates that are still on the trees by Miss Ollie’s store (now Sacred Craft Tattoos), because it’s got that same color. And I’m thinking that black reminded me of the black neighborhood … I’m seeing what he obviously saw. Oh my god, you know the memories. It’s just wonderful.”
“Homestead Revisited” artist Sondra Kretschmar said bright colors feature prominently in her work, and she was hesitant to include them after seeing the dark colors of “Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers.”
“But then I looked at some of this old work, and I got excited because they were bold and bright. And so we decided that these bold, bright colors would best represent Bill’s energy and spirit.”
Kretschmar’s collaborator at River City Glassworks, Kathryn Welch said that their creative process focused on the periods of transition that are so much a part of life in a college town.
“(We) thought of the young college students and just people who are passing through and making a new life for themselves,” Welch said. So it’s my hope that they might be able to see this and think about their own childhood home and what it meant to them, how it formed them to be who they are now and in the future.”
The project been especially meaningful because of the way Hutson’s works inspired the creativity of River City Glassworks, according to San Marcos Arts Commission Chair Kelly King-Green “Bill Hutson’s life reminds us of our power of art to preserve memory, to connect us to a place, and to shine light on our shared history,” King-Green said. “Through this project, his legacy continues to illuminate San Marcos for generations to come.”
