William ‘Bill’ Evans
William B. Evans of Jay died suddenly on Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. Born in Albany on May 28, 1947, Bill graduated from The Hotchkiss School in 1965. He graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s in political science in 1969, where he won the Winthrop Smith Award in lacrosse and was an All-American in football. He studied art at the L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, France, in 1978 and at the Parsons School of Design in Lake Placid. He taught art at the Munson-Wiliams-Proctor School of Art in Utica. He was the owner and manager of John Street Studio and Gallery from 1978 to 2009.
Bill loved the Adirondack mountains. He climbed the 46 peaks while at Camp Lincoln, and again as an adult, who witnessed the beauty of the seasonal landscapes through the eyes of an artist. Bill’s art won multiple awards and was exhibited in numerous solo and group shows. Working in multiple media, he created abstract and representational pieces.
Bill was the most delightful paradox. A strong and athletic sportsman, and a man whom no one can describe without using the word “gentle.” He craved time alone in the mountains as well as spending time in New York City, where he lived in the early ’70s. Serious and intellectual, yet always alive with a boyish sense of wonder. He never ceased to lose inspiration, and never made an easy decision.
A curator of family tales and legends, Bill was a historian and archivist who chronicled his family’s storied past. Bill’s maternal grandparents, the Brewsters, were early descendants of Lake Placid. His grandfather, O. Byron Brewster, served as a state supreme court justice on the New York Appellate Court.
Bill loved his family and stayed in touch with them all, including cousins near and far.
We will feel him in all the art he left behind for the world, and endeavor to carry on his legacy of caring for the environment and for one another.
Bill is survived by his beloved sisters, Christine Evans of Burlington, Vermont and Marion Jeffers of Keene Valley and his brother-in-law, Gregory Jeffers. He leaves behind three devoted nieces: Jennifer Danish, her husband Kyle and children Sam and Sophie; Jesse Jakobe, her husband Henry and their son Tucker; and Maya Judd and her four children, Oscar, Maple, Fox and Oslo. He was preceded in death by his parents, William Evans III and Jane Brewster Evans.
Donations in his memory can be made to any of the following organizations: The Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown; The Visitor Interpretive Center at Paul Smith’s College; Keene Arts; or the Adirondack Mountain Club. A celebration of Bill’s life is being planned in Keene Valley for spring 2026.