2007 Ruby Yang (BFA Painting, MFA Film) Academy Award

In 2007 Ruby Yang (BFA Painting, MFA Filmmaking) received the Academy Award for the Best Short Film Documentary for her film  The Blood of Yangzhou District about HIV in China. She was also nominated for a 2011 Oscar for her short documentary film The Warriors of Qiugang about a local village in central China battling a polluting chemical company. Yang is currently the “Hung Leung Hau Ling Distinguished Fellow in Humanities” as well as the Head of the Hong Kong Documentary Initiative--both at the University of Hong Kong.

For more information: http://yangruby.com/

and for information and trailer about The Blood of Yangzhou: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bloodofyzdistrict2006

and for information and trailer about The Warriors of Qiugang: http://www.warriorsofqiugang.com/en/1AboutFilm.html

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.

1948/1949 Harlan Jackson, Stanley Hayter, Haiti, 'The Lead Shoes'

The African American painter, Harlan Jackson, studied at the School from 1946 until 1948 where he took classes from Stanley Hayter and Mark Rothko and was the class monitor (ie, TA) for Richard Diebenkorn. He was also vice-president of the student body.  He participated in Sidney Peterson’s “Workshop 20” avant-garde film class that produced The Lead Shoes. Jackson played the title role as the deep sea diver. The Lead Shoes is considered “a miniature tour de force” and was “selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant and will be preserved for all time.”

The highly respected Jackson received the  School’s 1948/49 Rosenberg Travelling Fellowship, to visit Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and  then on to Haiti to study the connections between African and American Art.  Jackson’s correspondence describes Haitian social conditions, the art scene at Howard and Dillard Universities and New York City.

For all of you archival sleuths, the attached pdf is a selected set of letters pertaining to Jackson’s travels which includes wonderful letters he wrote back to the School, his initial proposal,  and his list of references that included David Park, Douglas MacAgy, Clay Spohn and Elmer Bischoff. 

And a youtube link to The Lead Shoes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXPhZ3nJpX8

[1948: Harlan Jackson as the deep sea diver; Stanley Hayter gives "constructive criticism" to Harlan Jackson; Harlan Jackson with beret on the set of The Lead Shoes, Sidney Peterson’s “Workshop 20” film class]

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.

1961 Bernice Bing SFAI Artist

Celebrating June PRIDE

Bernice Bing (“Bingo” to friends) got her MFA at SFAI in 1961, studying with faculty like Ernie Kim, Nathan Oliveira, Frank Lobdell, and Elmer Bischoff, and befriending fellow artists like Joan Brown, Carlos Villa, Jay DeFeo, and Wally Hedrick. Bing had a hard childhood—orphaned, shuttled between foster homes—but eventually found a place for herself in San Francisco: as a cocktail waitress at Vesuvio’s and the Old Spaghetti Factory, as a participant in the city’s queer scene (Bing had a cocktail named after her at bar/performance space The Cellar called the “Bingotoni” martini, made with 151-proof rum), and as an artist, showing her work at venues like the iconic avant-garde Batman Gallery. [BA]

In 2019 there was a terrific exhibition at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Bingo: The Life and Times of Bernice Bing:

https://svma.org/exhibition/bingo/

And for more on Bernice Bing see the dvd: The Worlds of Bernice Bing  https://www.aawaa.net/the-worlds-of-bernice-bing

And from Carlos Villa’s Rehistoricizing Abstract Expressionism Project:

http://rehistoricizing.org/bernice-bing/

With permission, SFAA is re-posting the emails Jeff Gunderson Librarian/Archivist Anne Bremer Memorial Library has been sending out since March 2020. Please enjoy this magnificent archive.