1975 SFAI Commencement, Cissie Swig, Fred Martin, Streaker, and Dog

Photo by Pamela Gerard

SFAI’s 1975 Commencement featured diplomas handed out to students, clothed or unclothed, human or canine, by Board Chair, Cissie Swig and the Director of the School, Fred Martin in turtleneck and plaid. Honorary Doctorates that year included SFAI alum, Richard Diebenkorn, and Academy Award winner for Special Effects, Linwood Dunn who worked on King Kong, Citizen Kane, and the original Star Trek, television series.

Fred writes: “I very much remember the event, and have always felt it's times like those that are the things that are great about SFAI.”

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.

Zig Jackson SFAI Guggenheim Fellow 2021

….and Pirkle Jones with his TA, Zig Rising Buffalo Jackson, 1994.

Congratulations to Zig Jackson/Rising Buffalo (MFA in Photography, 1994), one of 4 SFAI alumni recipients of 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship Awards (along with Dara Birnbaum, Michael Jang, and Enrique Chagoya). Zig’s work while a student included “Indian Man in San Francisco” and “Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation.” Zig was a TA for Pirkle Jones’s View Camera class. Zig writes that “it was an honor studying photography at SFAI, I have very fond memories of my faculty and peers from SFAI, everywhere I go I'm very proud to tell people I graduated out of the San Francisco Art Institute.”

In 2005 the Library of Congress announced that: “Zig Jackson became the first contemporary Native American photographer to be represented in the Library of Congress’ collections when he recently donated 12 large silver gelatin prints.” [2005? WTH had the LOC been doing all those decades?]

And Zig’s website: http://www.risingbuffaloarts.com/bio.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.

Flo Allen, SFAI 150th Exhibition, Come Visit!

Flo Allen, “Honey I AM the Art Institute” is one of the many wonderful features in the current exhibition, SFAI 150: A Spirit of Disruption. Allen, a legend in the Bay Area Art world for 7 decades, was an artists’ model in the 1930s at the Golden Gate International Exhibition on Treasure Island. She organized the Models’ Guild, sang in the Studio 13 Jass Band, was a hostess at the legendary Old Spaghetti Factory on Grant Avenue in North Beach and wrote a column, “Flo Sez” for the SF African-American newspaper, The Sun Reporter.

SFAI 150: A Spirit of Disruption is peppered with a broad range of SFAI artists and fellow travelers, from Henry Kiyama to David Johnson, Steven Arnold to Angela Davis, Mildred Howard to Fred Hayes, Leo Valledor to Alice Shaw, Lex Calip to Zulfi Bhutto, Kezia Harrell to Jenny Odell, Dewey Crumpler to Brett Reichman. & MORE! “Book An Appointment” to see SFAI 150: A Spirit of Disruption

Check out episode two of the podcast Are You Listening?, created to accompany the exhibition, to hear curators Margaret Tedesco & Leila Weefur discuss Flo’s long history at SFAI and the indelible mark she’s left on the San Francisco Bay Area art community.

PODCAST

(Celebrating #sfai150)

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.