top of page
Search

SFAI & its Olympians: Photo Student George Wallace: Olympian, Inventor


Portrait of George Wallace taken by Don Whyte, 1948.


George Wallace studied in the first photo classes with Ansel Adams, Minor White, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Dorothea Lange at the school in the late 1940s. Wallace was also a self-trained world champion speed skater who made the 1940 Olympic team--an Olympics that was cancelled because of WW2. Wallace invented the Expo-Disc, an aperture/depth-of-field photography tool.


Watch Wallace skate and win in Norway in 1940:


And for more on Wallace, his sporting life, photography and his invention:


And for more on SPORTS & SFAI see the following link to the SFAI Athletic Department via the UC Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives Matrix 277 virtual exhibition: Orbits of Known and Unknown Objects: SFAI Histories: Matrix 277 https://matrix277.org/Object-57



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.

Bruce Conner, SFAI Roll Books, Grade Inflation, Attendance Records & Wasted Time...


Bruce Conner’s SFAI “Life Drawing” class roll book, Fall 1967


Bruce Conner was a fellow traveler at SFAI from when he first arrived in San Francisco in the 1950s--exhibiting, screening films,and as a faculty member. Conner taught various courses at SFAI in the 1960s including “Life Drawing” where he obviously had a set of gifted students as illustrated in the above grade book, flourished with his attendance markings. Conner also taught an Undergraduate Seminar, "Wasted Time":


Course description in the 1966-67 College Catalog


And the back story: Having been told by SFAI Director Fred Martin that he could teach anything he wanted, Bruce Conner proposed a class titled Wasted Time. Martin shoots down the idea, explaining that he doesn’t want to have to justify the presence of a class with that name on student transcripts, and they compromise by calling the course Undergraduate Seminar (although the course description remains as proposed:“Wasted Time: unproductive activity of no practical application.”)



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.

Celebrating PRIDE!!! BERNICE BING!!!


1958 photo by Jerry Burchard of Bernice Bing;

1961 Batman Gallery Announcement;

Bing’sLas Meninas(1960) Crocker Art Museum,

and Velazquez’sLas Meninas (1656) Museo del Prado


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, William T. Wiley, 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]

Bing is included in a wonderful current exhibition, East-West Abstraction: Asian American Artists in Post-War California at the Modern Art West Gallery in Sonoma--along with fellow SFAI alumni, Sung-Woo Chun, Win Ng, Masako Takahashi, Emiko Nakano, Kiyo Koizumi, Carlos Villa, and more:

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

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:



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.

bottom of page