Artist Wiley Strikes a Funky Balance on Handmade Guitars : Exhibit: Concepts of Zen Buddhism and music are both important in his work, now on view at the Laguna Art Museum.

Sitting cross-legged on a gallery floor, William T. Wiley casually strummed one of his funky handmade guitars. Wearing faded jeans and wooden clogs, his long, graying hair in a ponytail, the soft-spoken artist from the Bay Area looked as low-key as they come. Don’t be fooled.

This 54-year-old may look harmless, but he’s more than eager to kick up some dust, and that sort of yin-yang is what much of his art is about.

Take “Agent Orange” (1983), one of some 30 works he has on view at the Laguna Art Museum through Oct. 11. A graceful tree-like structure at the heart of the piece actually is intended to bespeak the terrible effects of the chemical Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War. Delicate boughs arching out from a thin trunk symbolize a bomb explosion, Wiley explained. Animal antlers and a prosthesis placed below represent the loss of life and limb.

It’s about “the horror of beauty and the beauty of horror,” Wiley said. “Those things are constantly intermingling in life. We’re always trying to deny (the negative) and annihilate and purify, but horrible things come out of the urge to purify.”

Concepts of Zen Buddhism--of the balance between light and dark, good and evil--infuse Wiley’s work, a blend of Dadaism, Surrealism, American folk art and funk that defies classification. Sometimes, in a single tableau, he’ll combine abstract painted images with drawings and pointed written statements.

“I got into art because I could do whatever I wanted to do,” he said with a grin. “It’s one of the few places in life you can do that without hurting anyone.”

Wiley may editorialize--decrying war,pollution or homelessness--but his paintings, prints, drawings, watercolors and assemblages are just as likely to be whimsical, ironic or witty, and he likes word play and wry puns. (“My lie mass oak cure” reads part of “Agent Orange.”)

Music is a critical part of the mix, too. Its prominence in his art is the focus of the exhibit at the Laguna, “William T. Wiley: Struck! Sure? Sound/Unsound.”

A dozen unique musical instruments, many of which are etched with designs, symbols and words, are included in the exhibit, organized by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington.

“I like the idea of art not being totally inert,” said Wiley, who has a master’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute but no formal music training and who can’t read music. He started “messing around” on guitar and harmonica as a youth, about the same time he began to draw, he said.

“We traveled around a lot in the summers, and I picked up the harmonica to keep from going crazy with my parents,” who were looking for work and who finally settled in a suburb of Washington state, where Wiley bought his first guitar in high school. He created his first guitar images for “Agent Orange” in response to the prevalent role that rock music played in American popular culture during the Vietnam War. Other guitars of his make their own political or social statements.

“Cute Rules for Street People/No Place to Poop or Wash Up” (1986) features the grim image of a skeleton protecting his crotch with his bony hands. A piece of pipe entwined below alludes to bathroom plumbing.

For the traveling exhibit’s stopover in Laguna, Wiley created an installation that takes up most of one small room. Two large stringed instruments--whimsical conglomerations of myriad found objects--stand guard at either end of the room. Between them is a delicate, almost ethereal assemblage that packs a punch.

The piece explores the conflict between environmental concerns and the timber industry. Written across part of it is Wiley’s question: “How long will there be timber?”

“When (the timber industry) clean-cuts a hillside, nothing is left to hold the soil, so it erodes into trout streams and fills spawning beds,” thereby killing fish populations as well, Wiley said.

Like other works, the installation isn’t intended solely as a political statement. Wiley advocates that art should be enjoyed viscerally, not just intellectually. But he likes to make his opinions clear, to encourage communication with viewers and to prompt people to think.

“I’m trying to stimulate thought about what’s in the pieces, rather than to (prove) somebody’s right and somebody’s wrong,” he said. “Rodney King asked, ‘Can’t we all get along?’ Maybe a timber company manager seeing this will think of his kids and future generations, and realize all our interconnectedness.”

“William T. Wiley: Struck! Sure? Sound/Unsound,” through Oct. 11 at Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. (714) 494-8971.