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 and community focused zoom based 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 Exhibition and Programming lead Beth Davila Waldman (Alumna 2005) upon wrapping up three evenings of moderating these special discussions. “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. Waldman worked in unison with SFAA President Maria Barbarist, SFAA Exhibition and Programming assistant Xiaopeng Liu along 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 exchanges on zoom that took place each evening between the initial and encore screenings between the jurors and the archive film artist, but with the extended SFAI community. It has been SFAA's mission to ignite and revive that sense of collectiveness. While it has seemed that for many a month our treasured school has been a crumling, over three turns, THREE TURNS reframed the image of SFAI as a strong beacon of light once again, made possible by what it has always fueled it- art. The last evening, through the wind and rain, TURN 3 of THREE TURNS held strong with perseverance. 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!

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The SFAA Exhibition and Programming team

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