Dreamland was the name of one of the original three great parks of Coney Island. In William Steiger’s art, dreamland describes a place where, like a dream, some memories may be recalled and described in exquisite detail yet other information is forgotten, lost, or obscured - like the edges of an overexposed old black & white photograph. The intricate web of a Ferris wheel, an aerial tramway gliding along a delicate cable, landscapes as imagined from the perspective of an airplane, and stark yet colorful rural architecture all feel familiar and entirely fresh at the same time. Drawing from observation, memory, and imagination, Steiger is inspired, in part, by the early 20th century, including, of course, Coney Island. His sublime spaces have a tension that is often created more by what is omitted than by what is left in.

A graduate of Yale University (1989), William Steiger is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, and is the subject of over thirty articles and essays. His work is exhibited extensively internationally, and is in such collections as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, MOMA, the Pfizer Corporation, Microsoft and the Progressive Group, among many others. He was given a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art in 2002, and in 2003 began producing series of aquatint etchings with prestigious Pace Prints in New York.