1992 & 2014 M. Lamar & Orange is the New Black

While a BFA student, M. Lamar worked in the library as well as in the Facilities Department where his marvelous voice, singing opera, would echo through the concrete corridors. His identical twin is the trans actress Laverne Cox.  

M. Lamar appeared in the TV show Orange is the New Black, playing  Laverne Cox’s character’s pre-transition scenes. M. Lamar’s piece, NegroGothic  was exhibited at SFAI in 2015. The piece is witness to “the violence of our past, freedoms of the present, alongside the ongoing inability of the American justice system to materially protect black youth.  Lamar painfully evokes injustice, even as he occupies the transcendent, empowered role of the diva.”

For more on M. Lamar: http://www.mlamar.com/

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.

2014 (circa) Ed Drew, Tintypes, SFAI

In 2009 Ed Drew (self portrait in plaid on campus) joined the California Air National Guard where he wound up serving in Afghanistan in the spring of 2013.  Drew photographed his comrades, the first wartime tintype photographs since the Civil War.  While in the Guard, Drew also attended SFAI where he majored in sculpture and took photo classes from Lonnie Graham, Linda Connor, and Hank Wessel. His tintype work includes numerous projects:  his fellow soldiers, students and staff at SFAI,  as well as a commissioned project by the Klamath Oregon Tribe that was exhibited at the California Historical Society in 2015—a series that is in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum.  

For more information on Ed Drew:  https://eddrew.net/

And an interview with Ed from SF CBS affiliate KPIX:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFFcINC17DY

And a blurb from The New Yorker:  https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-war-in-afghanistan-in-tintypes#slide_ss_0=1

And a presentation at the California Historical Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8ZAFZicsU

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.

1962 Hayward King, Jay DeFeo, 6 Gallery, Richmond Art Center

Jay Defeo, painting faculty member with SFAI Registrar, Hayward King as the live components of an elaborate still life set-up in what appears to be Studio 13.  At this time DeFeo was in the middle of painting her quintessential beat era paintingThe Rose.  King arrived in S.F. from Pasadena with fellow students Deborah Remington, David Simpson, and Wally Hedrick.  He received his BFA from the School in 1955 and King along with Remington, Hedrick, Simpson, Jack Spicer, and John Allen Ryan co-founded the 6 Gallery where Allen Ginsberg first readHowl.  King received a Fulbright to study at the Sorbonne, was the Registrar at SFMOMA, and the Director of the Richmond Art Center. 

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.