SFAA Newsletter June 2022 |
We are an independent non-profit organization run by San Francisco Art Institute alumni. We build upon SFAI's
150-year alumni legacy with a commitment to SFAI's core values of critical thinking, exploration, and expression. |
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The San Francisco Art Institute tower casts its kiss across North Beach. Photo by Dan Bockmier |
Dear Alumni,
As of today, information regarding the status of the USF acquisition of SFAI is unclear to us. The last we learned was of the painful process that USF will require SFAI faculty and staff to apply for their positions; students too must apply for admission, possibly for a BA in Art (not a BFA). June 30th is the Letter of Intent deadline, so we hope to learn more on that day. SFAI is giving a summer course that ends on July 15th. We may find padlocks on the door at 800 Chestnut Street after that day. There are current SFAI students working on an alternate plan. Please see the students’ urgent message below, asking for your participation.
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The Students For Action group (SFA), formed out of current SFAI students, has been making a concerted 11th hour attempt to maintain SFAI as an independent art school. Please take a look at SFA’s carefully prepared presentations HERE.
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Eadweard Muybridge, photographic study of a man jumping a horse, from Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. Commenced 1872–Completed 1885. Volume IX, Horses, 1880s; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. |
"It’s one of our oldest surviving cultural institutions, if you go back to its origins in the 1870s with the San Francisco Art Association, to which painters like Albert Bierstadt and photographers like Eadweard Muybridge—I know about it because in my 2003 book on the latter man I tracked some of that lineage. One thing that stands out is how someone found a stash of Muybridge photographs from the 1870s or 1880s and sold them to buy video equipment for the new performance/video department in the 1970s, a beautiful example of continuity and change and the old underwriting the new.
But more than the sheer continuity as something worth protecting, there’s something magic about the Art Institute, something that’s fostered genius, originality, weirdness, over and over. It is not just the faculty or the students or the magnificent setting since the Russian Hill location opened, but some mysterious alchemical combination of that and the permission California and San Francisco give. A permission not to break rules but to be outside the jurisdictions in which some rules apply and are enforced—it’s why at the height of Abstract Expressionism David Park and then the whole Bay Area Figurative movement could go back to representation. "
–– Rebecca Solnit |
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Dale Hoyt, Self Portrait with Blarf. |
Dale Hoyt (MFA'80) passed away peacefully on April 12, 2022, just two weeks after being diagnosed with a terminal illness. He chose to keep his condition private with just a few close friends knowing, and he was surrounded by their love during his final days. His passing came as a shock to many and inspired an outpouring of remembrances collected here on the SFAA website. This link allows you to write a remembrance of your own and provides a 360 degree view of Dale Hoyt the man and avant-garde video artist, as written about and photographed by colleagues, his students, museum curators, gallery directors, collaborators, producers, friends and more.
His life story takes place on the wildside of American subculture, within a confluence of the art world, music scenes, and pop-culture. Dale Hoyt was a great and rare talent and his contribution to the SFAI and Bay Area art communities is immeasurable.
–– Monet Clark
SFAA wishes to thank Monet Clark, Lior Bar and Kathy Brew for collecting these remembrances to make this beautiful tribute page to Dale.
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SFAI Class of 2022 at the Commencement Ceremony. May 21, 2022. Photo by Marian Wallace
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It is with great pleasure that we, the members of the SF Artists Alumni congratulate the Graduates of the SFAI class of 2022. You are a class like no other and gave so much to the S.F. art community in such difficult times. Please know that you have joined a global multi generational community of SFAI alumni who are eager to help guide you. We understand you’ll need some time to step away but please know SFAI alumni are everywhere. We hope you’ll sign up for our newsletter and participate in exhibitions, become a regional alumni liaison, listen to lectures and much more.
View the Commencement Ceremony 2022. Congratulations again to them:
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Bryan Birch (MFA SA), Kellen Chasuk (BFA Painting), Yifei Cheng (BFA Photography), Moghaddam Soheil Heravi (BFA Photography), England Hidalgo (BFA Printmaking), Yuyang Ji (BFA Photography), Kimberly Keown (MFA SA), Sandra Ramos Lorenzo (MFA SA), Mikayla Mays (MFA SA), Barrett Moore (BFA Photography), Hollie Newton (BFA Painting), Jennifer Polendo (MFA SA), Eve Werner (LMFA SA), Kyle Wilhite (MFA SA), Helena Wong (BFA Painting). |
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Photo: Stuart Bass, The Buck Stops Here, 2021. |
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SF Artists Alumni is so proud to present our 2nd Anniversary Exhibition "MINE: What is Ours in the Wake of Extraction" opening June 16th from 5 – 8pm at The Midway Gallery in San Francisco. Curated by Patsy Craig of AWA based in Cusco, this exhibition brings together the artwork of SFAI Alumni and the Etochime Artist Collective that render the impact of extractive industries on the Harakbut Indigenous community from the region of Madre de Dios in the southern Peruvian Amazon, an area heavily impacted by contamination from the illegal gold mining boom of the past 20 years there. Please join us for this very significant and pivotal exhibition.
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Photo by Eleni Exarchou (BFA 1986). |
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We celebrate the community of SFAI alumni who have collectively connected and engaged us during ANOTHER extraordinary year of chaos, change, and uncertainty.
Come say ‘hello’ friends old and new, near and far.
We’ll be giving away prizes and auctioning off an artwork by someone fancy. |
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| Photo by Liz Miller Kovacs. |
| Join liaison Liz Miller Kovacs for the first SFAA Berlin Meetup (in person)!
Time: Sunday, June 25th, 5-8pm CEST Place: BRLO BRWHOUSE Schöneberger Straße 16 10963 Berlin |
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FROM JEFF GUNDERSON'S SFAI ARCHIVE
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Photo by Annie Reiniger-Holleb |
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Jeff Gunderson, our librarian, tells us that at this spot, this archway at the top of the ramp is where SFAI’s original 1927 building meets it’s 1969 expansion. This was the view (photos below) looking out toward Alcatraz from what was once the back entrance of that original 1927 building. Stairs led from here down to what was at the time a much larger meadow. The black and white photographs were taken in 1967 or 1968, as construction began on the new building and the old back entrance was demolished.
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Many thanks to Dan Bockmier, Students For Action, Rebecca Solnit, Linda Connor, Monet Clark, Lior Bar, Kathy Brew, Beth Davila Waldman, and Liz Miller Kovacs. |
Editor in Chief: Annie Reiniger-Holleb Designer: Lucien Liu Co-Editors: Marian Wallace, Rye Purvis |
To contact the Editors at SFAA Newsletter email: news@sfartistsalumni.org
Or send letters to our address: Editors SFAA Newsletter 3019 Ocean Park Blvd. #123, Santa Monica, CA 90405 SF Artists Alumni Inc. is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization and our EIN Federal Tax ID number is 85-1943816.
Your contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. |
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