SFAA Newsletter February 2021
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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Karen Finley in performance and portrait
Photo by Midge Wattles
“Yes, interdisciplinary. Each way offers a different perspective into the material. In one way, there are the words themselves, and the unraveling of the words — trying to unpack the assault of the language”. Read the interview
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Exhibition presented in partnership with SFAI and SFAA
Images: Three Turns, 2021, screening SFAI archive films and films from featured artists.
© Xiaopeng Liu
Over three nights on the San Francisco Art Institute's historic tower, our inaugural partnership with SFAI project, THREE TURNS brought forth a needed dialogue across generations through the juried response films by SFAI Alumni, selected films from SFAI's historic archives and nightly inclusive community focused panel discussions featuring jurors Kathy Brew, Minoosh Zomorodinia, and Christopher Coppola in conversation with film archive artists Nao Bustamante, Yin-Ju Chen and Vishnu Dass, representing The Steven Arnold Archives.
"It was a true salute to the character of SFAI's community coming together to celebrate our school's 150th Anniversary," said SFAA's Exhibition and Programming lead Beth Davila Waldman. “THREE TURNS was a thoughtful juxtaposition of SFAI’s artistic past with its present — works bridged seamlessly in spirit by the universal dilemmas of the human experience,” said Vishnu Dass, Director of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archives. The SFAA Exhibitions Team worked in unison with SFAI's Kat Trataris, Niki Korth and the wizard behind the curtain, SFAI's Film Studio Manager Christopher Paddock, to bring THREE TURNS to life. But THREE TURNS was a collaborative project beyond our team and the film archive artists and response artists, it began with the selections of the archive films by Margaret Tedesco and Leila Weefur, curators of the upcoming 150th anniversary exhibition "Spirit of Disruption". The collaboration continued beyond the powerful dances of film and sound on the tower with the conversations that took place each evening between the jurors and the archive film artist and invigorated by our extended SFAI community. THREE TURNS reframed the image of SFAI as a strong beacon of light once again, made possible by what has always fueled it- art. As juror and SFAI faculty (alum 1985) Christopher Coppola noted as that evening came to a close, "The SFAI tower was like a lighthouse using SFAI creativity to guide the way in the storm." It could not have been said better. Thank you to all who participated and supported THREE TURNS!
The SFAA Exhibition and Programming team
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Image: Zanjir © Amak Mahmoodian
For close to two decades, PhotoAlliance has offered wonderful lectures to the Bay Area community, highlighting well-known and celebrated photographers as well as introducing remarkable emerging artists from our community. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the cancellation of most of our 2020 programs. To make a silver lining of this shutdown period we are launching an International Lecture Series for spring 2021. Using the new normal of online programming, each of the artists in our spring series will be “beaming in” from locations throughout the world. All of the lectures will be free and open to the public, with online registration.
We eagerly await the day when we will once again be able to have our programs in
person and with safety, but until then we hope you will join us in the opportunity that
Zoom provides to connect with incredible artists however distant.
For our opening event, PhotoAlliance is delighted to welcome photographer Amak
Mahmoodian (Iranian, based in UK) for an online lecture and presentation about her
photography and new book Zanjir.
Mahmoodian will be discussing her most recent series and accompanying book, Zanjir. She describes Zanjir as “a conversation imagined between the Persian princess and memoirist Taj Saltaneh (1883-1936) and I”. Combining imagery from a 19th century collection held at Golestan archives in Tehran with photographs Mahmoodian made in contemporary Iran, Zanjir challenges myths of absence and presence.
The PhotoAlliance 2021 International Lecture Series is presented in partnership with
the San Francisco Art Institute and the San Francisco Artists Alumni.
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The entrance to the San Francisco Art Institute’s Chestnut Street campus. (Courtesy of SFAI)
"How an enormous board-initiated undertaking of volunteer labor created a dynamic new plan for the school’s future, which now floats in limbo?" Sarah Hotchkiss, KQED.
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Dear Alumni, Colleagues and Friends,
Thank you so much for attending the Committee to Re-Imagine SFAI's Town
Hall hosted by SFAA on Thursday, January 14 and responding favorably to our presentations.
At the end of the session, we offered a link to a survey to hear your feedback about the presentations. Here's the link again. Please do complete it.
Also SFAA wants to provide a way for you to remain connected and engaged in future efforts, so please do answer those questions as well.
And here's a link to the presentations documents and a video recording of the Town
Hall.
Finally, we thought you might like to read this article posted online by KQED about the Re-Imagine work and process.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Karen Topakian and Tom Loughlin, co-chairs, Committee to Re-Imagine SFAI.
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Black Americans, July 4th, 2018.
© Adrian L. Burrell
Adrian L. Burrell (Oakland, California) is a storyteller who uses photography, film, and site-specific installation to examine issues of race, class, gender, and intergenerational dynamics. His work focuses on notions of kinship, diasporic narratives, and the gaps between place and belonging. His series “Mama’s Babies” traces his family’s history through slavery, the Great Migration, the crack era, and the current displacement of Black people in Oakland through gentrification.
Adrian won the 2019 SF Camerawork Juror’s Choice Award and the John Collier Award from SFAI. He has lived and worked on four continents and has exhibited work in spaces as varied as the Pingyao International Photography Festival in China, Photoville in New York City, Pop-Up Magazine, and most recently, SFMOMA.
A United States Marine Corps veteran, Adrian earned a BFA in film from the San Francisco Art Institute, and is currently earning his MFA from Stanford’s Department of Art & Art History, where he serves as the Black Graduate Student Community Outreach Chair.
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Mama’s Babies. © Adrian L. Burrell
“Mama’s Babies started as a way to document and look deeper into my family history, developed out of a need to preserve that history as I watched it disappear. Over time, it became a personal archive and a dialog between past and future. Through interviews with my grandmother, Threater Smith, and other family members, portraiture and archival materials, I wanted to understand the gravity while capturing the quotidian and making space for joy.”
Tio Lino. © Adrian L. Burrell
Burrell’s beautifully directed 6 minute film titled Tio Lino, shows the power of one man’s goal to save the children of Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha community.
He offers hope in one of the largest slums in Latin America. To prevent children from dying from drugs, he swaps guns for brushes and cameras and encourages them to embrace the arts through painting and photography.”
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Jim Melchert, pencil on paper by Phong H. Bui.
Jim Melchert was born in 1930 in Ohio. After his undergraduate studies in art history at Princeton he taught English in Japan for four years in exchange for the rich experience of living there. Returning to the States he earned degrees in painting at the University of Chicago and afterwards ceramics under Peter Voulkos at the University of California, Berkeley. Finding the Bay Area to be receptive to artists in the way that watering holes are to migratory birds, he settled in Oakland and thrived on the interaction among his colleagues and young artists at UC-Berkeley where he taught. In 1977 the National Endowment for the Arts brought him to Washington, DC to direct its Visual Arts Program for four years. From 1984 to 1988 he joined the American Academy in Rome as Director.
One can see from the diversity of Melchert’s art work that he is a maverick who disregards many of the canons that define disciplines. His travels throughout the Mediterranean in the 1980s introduced him to ceramic tile as a medium ripe for further investigation.
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Kavena Hambira is a contemporary Namibian artist, filmmaker and writer based in Oakland, California. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Kav is a former Fulbright scholar and chairperson of the Namibia Institute for Democracy.
As an African living in the diaspora, he is interested in using the poetics of film to ask political questions, and provide opportunities for the exchange of public opinion. His practice draws from a unique vantage point, operating as a conduit between Southern Africa and the African diaspora.
The People's Uncle, 2021. A film by Kavena Hambira
The People’s Uncle, was produced, filmed and edited by Kavena Hambira. A film about what happened to Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson after the murder of his nephew Oscar Grant by a BART police officer in 2009, and how Uncle Bobby re-emerged as a social justice activist. Now at the forefront of ending police violence in the United States. Kavena Hambira’s documentary “The People’s Uncle” chronicles his journey and his work with families affected by similar conditions.
Kavena Hambira
Kav’s film was screened last month in the group exhibition titled When Things Get Back to Normal at the Worth Ryder Art Gallery in Berkeley, CA. People are welcome to watch Kav’s 16 minute film here. You can watch the panel discussion next week.
On Friday, February 19, 2021, 6:00pm PST - with first year UC Berkeley MFA grad students will offer:
Featured Artists:
Kavena Hambira, Erica Deeman, Edgar Fabián Frías, Hala Kaddoura, Ahn Lee, Rivka Louissaint.
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Liaison Shokai Sinclair is hosting the SFAA USA Alumni Meetup on Saturday, February 6, 10am PST.
Join the February SFAA USA Alumni Meetup
Meet other USA-based alums at this monthly meetup. It's a great opportunity to learn what's going on in the arts across the country, run into old classmates, discover new opportunities, or meet your next collaborative partner. All alumni are welcome to join!
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Want to present at our next global meetup? Sustainability-themed global alumni meetup! Saturday, March 6, 9am PST.
Join the March SFAA Global Alumni Meetup
We're hosting a global Zoom meetup of SFAI alumni on March 6, and the theme is environmental sustainability. We're looking for alums who want to present work related to this theme. Whether you use sustainable materials or your art deals with conservation or climate justice, we'd love to see your work.
Please email Shokai at shokai.sinclair@gmail.com by February 15 if you're interested in presenting.
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FROM JEFF GUNDERSON'S SFAI ARCHIVE
Celebrate Black History Month, 1988 poster
Celebrate Black History Month, 1988 poster promoting SFAI Student sponsored Black History Month lectures, film & video screenings, exhibits, live performances, readings, and a multi-media art show.
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Thanks to the SFAA Exhibition and Programming team Beth Davila Waldman, Xiaopeng Liu, Maria Theresa Barbist, and Christopher Paddock, Kat Trataris, Niki Korth from SFAI for curating Three Turns.
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Many thanks to Marian Wallace, Vale Vale, Lior Bar, Shokai Sinclair, Jeff Gunderson, Karen Finley, Kathy Brew, Alain Lee Burrell, Kavena Hambira, Karen Topakian, Tom Loughlin, Linda Connor, Adjunct Faculty and the entire Re-Imagine Committee, PhotoAlliance, Brooklyn Rail and the UC Berkeley Museum of Art Matrix Gallery.
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Editors: Annie Reiniger-Holleb & Joyce Burstein
Coeditors: Xiaopeng Liu & Marian Wallace
To contact the Editors at SFAA Newsletter email: SFAA2News@gmail.com
Or send letters to our address: Editors SFAA Newsletter 3019 Ocean Park Blvd. #123, Santa Monica, CA 90405
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