Meet Wil Bosbyshell by Canvas Rebel

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Wil Bosbyshell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Wil, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there an experience or lesson you learned at a previous job that’s benefited your career afterwards?

I am a fine artist, but in the past and now I lead other organizations and groups. Art became my leadership tool

In high school my friends and I dreamed of drawing our own comics. I just started doing it. I created, drew, inked and lettered a comic on the correct professional paper. My friends said, “if Wil can do it, so can I.” And I helped them with their comics as well. We then published our own fanzine of comics and stories: Destiny Magazine.

In my first Army duty station I wanted to motivate my soldiers to action with less worry about being perfect. So, I gave out cartoon awards about all the unit’s funny moments.

In graduate MBA school, I wanted us all to have fun together, so I drew and wrote funny, stupid flyers for parties and events. If other students wanted to create a flyer, I encouraged it and helped with the drawing.

In my secondary Army assignment, I took the funny award idea and expanded it, encouraging the unit to contribute quotes after each exercise. We secretly displayed these funny quotes and cartoons in a closet in the back of the operations office. By accident, the Battalion Colonel saw the funny quote wall. I thought that I would be in big trouble. Instead, the Colonel had the funny quotes moved to the 100-foot wall in front of his office. “Captain Bosbyshell, you’re in charge of curating the funny wall. Everyone can be made fun of without exception! Especially me.” Every officer and senior Sergeant leaving the unit received a bound printed book compiling the funny quotes and cartoons.

As scoutmaster, there were already many awards built into the scouting system: merit badges, event patches, ranks, etc. However, they were a little stiff, boring, or formal. My senior boys were crazy jokers. Most kids are. Good boys, but real cutups.

After the first outing I handed the older boys a pad of paper in the van on the way home. “Write down the funny and stupid things the boys said and did this weekend,” I asked. They filled the pad! No encouragement needed. I went home and drew a page with cartoons of our Troop’s adventures, then I turned the quotes into awards. For example: “Most volume of puke ever seen” award, which became known as the spew award. On this outing a boy got carsick, puking both in and out of a parent’s car. Not his parents’ car of course. The funny awards, as they became known, were presented at the meeting after each outing, so a quick turnaround. These awards also included many positives like “Best Cooking Patrol, Top Chef, and Toughest Biker.” But the awards like the Spew Award are great behavior modifiers. A boy that earned the ‘Spew Award’ or one of its variations, ‘Most Chunky Puke and Puking in the Fire,’ never threw up again on a subsequent outing. Success!

Some of my childhood friends needed this type of award, they threw up everywhere.

The boys displayed their collected funny awards at important rank ceremonies. The troop grew from nine boys to fifty while I was a scoutmaster. My fellow scoutmasters, the serious ones, never understood the value of the funny awards. “Wil, these awards are completely made-up and don’t make sense!”
No, not to adults, but the boys loved them. Who says artists can’t be leaders?

Wil, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I received a BFA (as a member of the ROTC) and MBA from the University of Georgia and spent six years as an officer in the US Army following my undergraduate education. After a successful business career in the private sector, I was awarded a residency at the Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest, which set the course for my artistic career. I have a studio in the Charlotte North Davidson Street Arts District, and taught as an arts professor for two decades at local community & technical colleges.

I am an artist whose art is rooted in a love for the natural environment, and our intimate but often unconscious relationship with it. My ongoing observation and time amidst both urban and natural landscapes allows me to center my practice on honoring and protecting the world, while simultaneously paying homage to the beauty it provides. Growing up immersed in a seascape menagerie full of natural curiosities, my work stems from personal questions and ongoing studies of how nature can serve our needs, and conversely, how we must also meet the needs of the natural environment.

My particular fascination with trees lies in my belief that trees are not proverbial abstract things but individual, living beings with personalities and stories to tell. Bringing those stories into a daily consciousness is at the heart of my creative process. By centering on the interaction between the texture of the bark, the natural design of the limbs and the depiction of scars left by time and weather, I can achieve an asymmetrical balance that stimulates our minds and invites us to develop a more personal relationship with trees—leading to greater understanding of their importance in the ecosystem and the spiritual place they hold in the world.

My main art series now focus on graphite tree drawings and hiking sketches.

The thing that drives me to make art is the conversations it generates with other people. Those conversations can be in a classroom or worship setting or with the public.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I went into the US Army between art school and having a professional career. The Army is such a unique and supportive environment, it was hard to transition to the business world where everyone is on their own.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bosbyshellartstudio.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wilbosbyshell/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wil.bosbyshell/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilbosbyshell/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wilbosbyshell/videos

 

At the Edge of the World

 

At the Edge of the World

By Wil Bosbyshell

Standing at the edge of the world, it's giving me the chills.

-      Green Day

 

It looked like a cartoon; one I watched as a kid on Saturday mornings. A big, round, pitch black hole in the side of a cliff with very large tracks going in and out: this was a bear cave.

Not just any bear cave; it was a grizzly bear cave in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. Except, this wasn't a cartoon, it was a real bear cave, only 25 yards away from me. I was standing at the edge of the world in front of a bear cave, and it was giving me chills, both literal and metaphorical.

“Sergeant Major Roberts is there a reason we stopped here,” I casually inquired. We were looking out of the top two hatches of our Army Arctic Snowcat. “Besides observing a bear cave, well… no,” he said laughing. I tried not to sound scared, which I was. Actually I was really scared. This was a grizzly bear cave, and it was a warm day for February in Delta Junction, Alaska at 10°F above zero. “It’s so warm, they might wake up from hibernating,” I ventured as an important theory. “Look at those prints, they are enormous,” the Sergeant Major added gleefully. He was a British Army combat veteran of the Falkland Island war. He had no fear, or at least far less fear than I had.

“We've seen it …. let's move along,” I said trying to sound tough.

It was going to be quite a day. I was the 2^nd Lieutenant test officer for the Army's new 105 mm light Howitzer at Fort Greely, Alaska (The Army’s Northern Warfare Test Center). It was February 1985 and we were testing the Howitzer’s performance on skis. Using a SUS-V Arctic Snowcat, a vehicle with two articulated sections equipped with rubber tracks so it could ‘float’ on top of the snow, which towed the Howitzer on skis. We were documenting the skis durability and what depth of snow, if any, they would get stuck in.

As part of the test, we were on a two-day trek through the northern warfare school property on Ft. Greely Alaska, which was thousands of acres of untouched wilderness. Earlier that morning we had driven to the top of a very large snowbank. We stopped, literally floating on the snow due to the snow cat’s rubber treads. I was navigator and opened my side door to check the snow depth. Looking down, it didn’t look that deep to me. Standard procedure dictated I put on my bear claw, or small, snowshoes to jump down into snow of unknown depth. Disregarding this standard procedure, I jumped into the snow certain that the ground was not too far below. I knew something was wrong when my head passed the tractor treads on the way down.

Fortunately, I grabbed the bottom snow cat track as I fell past it on the way to certain death by snow suffocation. I was hanging, feet dangling and arms outstretched, in the snow below the snow cat. Staff Sergeant Smith pulled me back in as I yelled, “no one else jump out.” “Lieutenant, that wasn’t the easy way to exit the vehicle. It wasn’t even the hard way. That was the ‘cowboy’ way!” Sergeant Major Roberts said, “Are you Americans normally this daft, or did you take pills today?” He had a point.

We never found the ground. We tried to measure the snow depth with a weighted string and never found the bottom. Ten in the morning and already a brush with death, a common occurrence in Alaska. It seems there was no amount of snow that would cause these skis to get stuck. I thought, test mission accomplished!

We traveled onto the unmanned remote weather station, Observation Post 35, that was the midpoint of our trek. On top of a lookout tower, the air was so clear with zero humidity that we could see Mt. Denali 200 miles away. I thought that we had successfully determined the Howitzer equipped with skis was able to trail the snow cat through any depth of snow. However, the Sergeant Major felt differently; he felt we needed to try the terrain in snowy ravines. Presently, we were traveling in a deep snowy canyon when we came across the bear cave.

The ravine walls towered 50 feet over the top of the snow cat. We could only drive forward, there was no room to turn around. There was no place to go should a pissed off grizzly bear charge out of the cave, which I was certain was imminent.

“Hibernating bears definitely get up and walk around on occasion…. you know, to maybe shit in the woods,” I tried a joke. “Is the cave scaring you Lieutenant?” the Sergeant Major asked. “Hell yes, it is,” I replied. The prints in and out of the cave were massive and many. We had only three live rounds in a shot gun to scare off wildlife. The Sergeant Major loved to pick on Lieutenants and especially this Lieutenant. I was used to it, everyone in the Army hated lieutenants. I could tell that SGT Vereen and the two 18-year-old privates with us were not too excited by the bear cave either. No one volunteered to get out or even suggested it. No dares were issued. A shot gun was not going to stop any bear that made the tracks we were looking at.

Fortunately for us, the bears were sleeping soundly. We slowly crept away; it was a little too warm that day to tarry in front of a grizzly bear cave.

We stopped for the night about five miles away and out of the ravine. We pitched the 5-man tent, small and hexagonal, for our camp. We laid out the canvas floor and lit the Yukon stove. No cots. A cot was too cold in Alaska; cold air circulating under you was a bad thing. It had been a warm day at 1:00 o'clock when the sun rose above the horizon for two hours. By 5:00 o'clock it was pitch black as usual, -10°F and dropping. Minus 10°F in Alaska was not too dangerous if you were trained for it and had the proper clothing. Not deadly like -55°F.

I lived off hot tea while I was in the Army in Alaska. Tea bags were weightless and many could be compressed into a very small space. Perfect for heavy backpacks. To warm myself, in the now minus 10-degree temperature, I drank too much hot tea for dinner. We heated and ate our MREs, chatted, told jokes, and the new Grenada combat vets told stories.

Sometime in the night, I had to pee because of all the tea I drank. I tried to hold it in but decided it was too long until morning. Going out into the Alaska night, I walked away from the tent into the dense, dark forest around our tent. The moon was bright on the snow and this close to the Arctic Circle the trees were very short. I started doing my business, sleepy, drowsy not paying attention to my surroundings. I was looking up at the amazingly clear, starry sky when I heard the slightest of slight noises in front of me. It's quiet in the middle of the Arctic tundra at night…. very quiet. I looked down and realized I had a new friend. In front of me, less than 20 feet away, was a very large, black wolf.

Alaska wolves can be five to seven feet nose to tail. I am unsure exactly how big this wolf was. I once encountered a mastiff hound in the Italian Alps; this wolf was larger. He was looking right at me. My eyes adjusted to the dark, I didn't need a flashlight to see the wolf’s face and eyes. I didn’t move a muscle. Two more wolves flanked the first wolf. They were big also. I didn't turn my head to see the other wolves in the pack, which I was certain were right and left out of my peripheral vision. They looked at me; I looked at them. No malice, no menance, just curiosity. 

I tried to remember the briefing from my dangerous wildlife training: was I to look the wolf in the eye or down and away? Which was it, shit? Brain freeze, literally. It didn't matter. I blinked and the wolves were gone. No sound. No sound at all. Just vanished into the night. I stood still, for a time, until I started getting cold. The next morning the tent and the snow cat were circled by wolf tracks … a lot of wolf tracks. Fortunately, wolves appeared to be well fed in these parts!

At the edge of the world wolves and bears were the masters, not man. I had spent two days travelling through the middle of nowhere, to the edge of the world, and lived.

Urban Sketching Workshop 

with Wil Bosbyshell

Discover the joy of urban sketching in this hands-on, outdoor workshop hosted by Presson Gallery.

Saturday, Feb 21st, 2026, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

Presson Gallery – Downtown Monroe, North Carolina

$40 per adult, with children eligible for a $25 discounted rate when registered with an adult.

Sketch your way through downtown Monroe on a guided walk with artist Wil—no experience needed, just curiosity. The workshop fee is $40 per adult, with children eligible for a $25 discounted rate when registered with an adult. To reserve a child spot at the discounted rate, please contact Presson Gallery directly by phone, message, or email. Payment for parent and child tickets may be made at the time of the workshop. Please see full workshop details on website.

REGISTER