Bill Zacha

Bill Zacha (born 1920 in Garland, Texas, died March 18, 1998, at Fort Bragg, California) was an artist and entrepreneur who founded the Mendocino Art Center in Mendocino, California, and by doing so started the artistic revival of Mendocino.

Biography Zacha studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, spent four years in the United States Navy entertaining troops as a writer and actor during World War II, and later made unsuccessful forays into the priesthood and drama. Returning to Berkeley to continue his architecture studies, he supported himself as a cable car conductor, but dropped out after injuring his right hand in a fall. He moved to Washington, D.C., where he studied art at the Corcoran Gallery and learned to paint left-handed.

The Zachas moved to Mendocino, then nearly a ghost town, in 1957, and Zacha took a job as a high school teacher. bought the estate for $5500, Zacha also ran a combination laundry/art gallery and restored many other buildings in Mendocino. Zacha's series of 55 serigraphs depicting the Tōkaidō road in Japan is collected in his book Tokaido Journey (1985).