San Francisco

Art Institute

SFAI,

I arrived at SFAI in the fall of 1976 to study with Howard Fried- we didn’t have Studio 9 as of yet, so we were having class in a closet size room with no windows between the sculpture and painting areas—it was this in between room in a hallway, which was perfect. So that lasted for a semester and then in 1977, Howard’s class moved to Studio 9, which was the beginning of what became the Performance Video department and later the New Genres department. I had just come from Miami where I spent 10 years, but my formative years were also in Cuba during the revolution, I was there until 1966. So I brought with me a lot of baggage from the exile community that I was trying to escape from. So what I brought with me was this sort of attitude from Caribbean culture. A lot of rituals…we could go into detail, but for now I think you get my drift. I was looking for a language. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. By appropri-ating a certain ritual for my first performance in Studio 9, it was this idea of cleansing the space that you are going to work, live, and spend time in. It was this kind of combination as we moved into Studio 9, that my first performance, moving in the class there, was to do this sort of cleansing as you will. It involved rum, cigar smoke, and then throwing a bucket of dirty water out the door. My own preference was to give priority to the image of the performance—that frozen moment—because otherwise you would have to be there.

When students graduate from SFAI, equipped with a new set of tools and knowledge, some go back to their hometowns and homelands, some venture out into new territories and cities, and

others stay here in the Bay Area committed to the continuing tradition of San Francisco art and culture. All in all, each year produces a commu-nity ready to go out into the world and be part of the extended family of artists, thinkers, curators, and producers.

I invite you to learn more, to become part of this community, and to impact the art world and culture at large.

–Tony Labat, SFAI alumni, practicing artist and MFA Director

SFAI faculty and alumni Tony Labat inside his and Whitney Lynn’s installation at the 2017 SFAI Gala

San Francisco is something different to each person who loves it—the spectacle of the Golden Gate Bridge, hidden spaces outlined in Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City, egg tarts in Chinatown, and the hectic and graceful moments as you walk down the streets of each of SF’s distinct neigh-borhoods. Founded just a handful of years after California’s historic Gold Rush, SFAI embodies the San Fran-cisco vision of those who made this city— those who overcame insurmountable odds to make a world unlike any other. San Francisco’s art world is eclectic, bound-ary-breaking, innovative, and grassroots. Unlike New York City or Los Angeles, the Bay Area’s art scene is accepting of—and profoundly commit-ted to—emerging artists, and SFAI is one of the longest-running and strongest foundations of San Francisco’s creative community.

The San Francisco Art Institute is a legacy school born out of a desire to further new and distinct artistic forms through the education of extraor-dinarily talented artists and scholars who engage in the core endeavor of the deep movement of ideas from generation to generation. Based on my interactions thus far with students, faculty, staff, and trustees— and with many more to come!—I am inspired by SFAI’s belief in the es-sential role the arts play in our changing world, and by its trust in the power of artists to advance critical dialogue. SFAl’s transformative relation-ship with social values and its central place in the community establishes us as an empowering force for all of San Francisco — from its historic neighborhoods, to its municipal centers, to its many arts organizations, and to its new, post-dig-ital inhabitants. I see SFAI as an institution that represents both historical continuity and a fear-less embrace of the future.

SFAI President Gordon Knox

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Gordon Knox, President

SFA

I

Alum Barry McGee wins the Anne Bremer Memorial Library’s Artists’ Book Contest. McGee was included in the 1999 and 2001 Venice Bien-nales. His retrospective at the Berkeley Art Museum was in 2012.

Barry McGee, Untitled, 2009; mixed media; dimensions variable; courtesy the artist and Ratio 3, San Francisco

Kehinde Wiley (SFAI alumnus 1999) gains wide attention for his painted portraits of hip-hop artists featured on VH1’s Hip-Hop Honors.

Kehinde Wiley, Ice T, 2005

SFAI faculty and alum Alicia McCa-rthy receives the SECA award from the recently reopened SFMOMA and completes a site-specific mural at Facebook HQ.

Alicia McCarthy, Permanent mural at Facebook Headquarters, Menlo Park, 2015 (detail)

SFAI Faculty member Dorothea Lange is hired by the War Relocation Authority to document the intern-ment of Japanese Americans.

Dorothea Lange, Destitute peapickers in California, a 32 year old mother of seven children, 1936

Alumna Annie Lebovitz becomes chief photographer at Rolling Stone magazine.

Annie Lebovitz, Rolling Stone cover, 1981

Janet Delaney, Tim O’Shea Eviction Graffiti, Langton Street, San Francisco, from the series South of Market, 1979; printed 2011; chromogenic print; 16 in. x 20 in. (40.64 cm x 50.8 cm); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of the artist; © Janet Delaney

Janet Delaney has a featured exhibi-tion at the DeYoung Museum, Janet Delaney: South of Market. Delaney received her MFA from SFAI in 1981 in photography, and worked on the South of Market series as a graduate student.

Joan Brown meets her instructor and mentor at SFAI, Elmer Bischoff. A seminal figure in Bay Area Figurative painting, Brown taught at SFAI from 1961–1968.

Joan Brown, Woman Wearing Mask, 1972; oil enamel on Masonite; 90 1/8 in. x 48 in. (228.92 cm x 121.92 cm); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Gift of Audrey Taylor Strohl; © Estate of Joan Brown

Underground film legend George Kuchar begins teaching at SFAI. Kuchar came to prominence for his experimental 8mm films, showing alongside Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol.

George Kuchar in Studio 8

Kathryn Bigelow on set courtesy of Summit Entertainment, LLC

Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win an Academy Award for Best Director for her film The Hurt Locker. Bigelow completed her degree at SFAI in Painting in 1972.

MFAStudio Art degree with optional emphasis in: Art + Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking or Sculpture

2 years | 60 units | 4 semesters

DUAL DEGREE MFA/MA Studio Art MFA combined with a Master of Arts Degree.

Includes optional emphasis in: Art + Tech-nology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photog-raphy, Printmaking, or Sculpture

3 years | 72 units | 4 full-time semesters | 2 semesters of thesis and option for offsite work

MA Academically focused degree in History and Theory of Contemporary Art or Exhibition and Museum Studies 2 years | 42 units | 2 full-time semesters | 2 semesters of thesis and option for offsite work

LOW RESIDENCY MFA Studio Art degree

3 years | 60 units | 3 full-time summer semesters | 6 off-site semesters

POST-BACCALAUREATE Studio Art Post Graduate Certificate

1 year | 30 units | 2 semesters

Alysia Davis, Graduate Open Studios, MFA 2018

Paula Morales, Graduate Open Studios, MFA 2017

Rafael Bustillos, Graduate Open Studios, MFA 2017

STUDIO ART The MFA in Studio Art at SFAI offers an unprecedented chance to combine conceptual investigation and studio practice through a rigorous curriculum in an educational envi-ronment known for experimental, relevant, and intentional work. This program is one of a kind in its potential for creating vital original art while also providing opportunities for collaboration in a tight-knit community of artists and thinkers. SFAI is an immersive environment that is critically investigating the ideas of artistic prac-tice through a curriculum that offers exposure to many disciplines and an awareness of the places where disciplines intersect and overlap.

PAINTING The Painting program at SFAI has been at the forefront of many important historical developments, including Social Realism, Abstract Expressionism, Bay Area Figuration, the California Funk Movement and the street art-inspired projects of the Mission School. This pluralistic history informs the contemporary moment where all possibilities are valued—from traditional approaches on canvas to interdisciplinary painting practices.

NEW GENRES Initially founded as an emphasis in performance art and video, this program also encom-passes site specificity, social practices, and other trans-disciplinary media and approaches.

PHOTOGRAPHY SFAI is home to the first fine art photography program in the country, founded by Ansel Adams in 1946. Historical and critical knowledge of photography is brought to bear on contemporary practice. Issues of installation, scale, materials, presentation, technology, and audience interaction are rigorously considered and questioned.

FILM Investigate the full range of moving-image genres, including experimental, narrative, documentary, animation, and hybrid forms. SCULPTURE Working in ceramics, wood, metal, plaster, textiles, and new materials, students merge the conceptual with the material not only in objects, but also in installation, site-specific works, environmental public artworks, and social practices. Students are also encouraged to integrate video, sound, and electronics into their work, and to work with found objects. PRINTMAKING

This program critically examines such concepts as multiplicity, reproducibility, and the “matrix” of the print in relation to contemporary art practice. Students also expand ideas of display, exploring the full range of exhibition possibilities from traditional print editions to sculptural, installation-based, and interactive approaches. ART + TECHNOLOGY Produce contemporary art using technological forms such as time-based and networked media, digital media, audio, programming, and electronics.

• An elective-driven curriculum built around your independent work

• Contemporary art-world centered – where you develop authentic connections with faculty and community in line with your personal and professional goals

• Studio classes based on your own practice, not technical assignments

• Academic classes that further develop a critical foundation for your ideas and how you articulate your art practice

SFAI’S CURRICULUM IS...

GRADUATE ADMISSIONS (FALL 2016) Number of Applicants: 386Percent Admitted: 48%

ENROLLMENT (FALL 2016)Undergraduate: 338Graduate: 168Women/Men: 63/37%In-state/Out-of-state: 56/44%Domestic/International: 74/26%Student-Faculty ratio: 9:1

Chestnut Street Ceramics Studio

CREATIVE NON-FICTION PHOTOGRAPHY (LARRY SULTAN STUDY HALL) WITH LINDSEY WHITE AND JORDAN STEIN

Photo by Zach Sumner, Class photo at SFMOMA

This class explores the creation of meaning and the meaning of authorship with special consid-eration given to the life, work, and legacy of SFAI alumni and CCA professor Larry Sultan (1946–2009). Taught in tandem at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of the Arts, students will share and critique work with their cohorts while exploring ideas via individual and collaborative projects, studio experiments, readings, written responses, and field trips. Fo-cusing on reproduction, repetition appropriation, evidence and evidence – a seminal 1977 book project by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel—We will investigate the work of artists with especially complex relationships to images and author-ship. We will work toward a public project with SFMOMA’s Department of Education and Public Practice around Sultan’s upcoming retrospective at the museum.

Faculty Claire Daigle, John Priola, and Nicole Archer at the 2012 MFA Exhibition, photo by Drew Alitzer Photography

This graduate lecture course is designed to provide coverage of the major figures, themes, movements, and key art historical and theoret-ical narratives of 20th-century art in specific relation to contemporary practices. While taking into careful consideration the critiques of canonicity and avoiding re-inscription of exclu-sionary notions of mastery, the approach will be characterized by the various actions enfolded in the gerund “min(d)ing”: to excavate, to detonate, to pay heedful attention to, to be exasperated by, and to tend. The course, organized both in rough chronology and thematically, will begin with a survey of the cross-century reiterations of Manet’s Olympia with regard to thematics of class, gender, and race. Following sessions will proceed with a select core of case studies that will trace, to use Deleuze and Guattari’s phrase, “lines of flight” from Western Modern-ism toward global multiplicities. To cite a few examples: the trajectory of the gaze from Claude Cahun through Laura Mulvey to Cindy Sherman; Marcel Duchamp’s readymade as it has broad-ened the definition of art to encompass the art of the everyday; the minimal quietude of Agnes Martin’s drawn lines alongside those of Nasreen Mohamedi; Robert Smithson’s importance for current ecologically-based art interventions; the chromatic infatuations of Henri Matisse through Pipilotti Rist. The two volumes of Art Since 1900: Modernism Antimodernism Postmodernism by Foster, Kraus, Bois, and Buchloh will provide the foundational reading for the course.

MIN(D)ING THE CANON WITH CLAIRE DAIGLE

This class provides students with the opportu-nity to interact with three prominent contempo-rary artists in an intimate classroom setting. Past artists for this course have included Kerry James Marshall, Andrea Zittel, Chris Ofili, Ron Nagle and Lucy Lippard among many others. This course also facilitates the critical examination of various works of art as they address themselves to the social space formed by the seminar community. Students will not be allowed to verbally ex-plain their work prior to the beginning of group critiques, but they will have an opportunity to re-spond to the comments generated by other semi-nar participants. Each student will be required to present current work twice during the course of the semester, and will also be required to attend all seminar critiques. Additionally, students will be required to respond to each other's presented work in both verbal and written form. Students will be required to attend the evening lectures given by the artists affiliated with the seminar, and also attend the follow-up colloquia given the same week. They will also be required to sched-ule an individual studio critique with each of the aforementioned artists.

VISITING ARTISTS AND SCHOLARS (VAS) SEMINAR WITH MARK VAN PROYEN

Opened Fall 2017, the new graduate center is located on the waterfront just one mile from the Chestnut Street campus in the vibrant commu-nity of Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (FMCAC). FMCAC hosts nearly two dozen non-profit and arts organizations as residents. Many arts-centered events, including the Art Market San Francisco fair, are located in FMCAC, offering students a chance to immediately engage with the wider San Francisco art community. The 69,000 square foot campus is an active site for SFAI’s graduate programs, featuring 160+ studios, two main exhibition spaces, a gray box

media theater, state-of-the-art wood shops and editing suites, and more. Graduate students were actively involved in the process of creating a new home for their community. It is a dynamic new space for SFAI, hosting classes, exhibits, and waterfront events.

From 1871 to 1925, SFAI occupied four differ-ent buildings on Nob Hill before moving to its current location on Russian Hill in 1926, and the building was designed by Arthur Brown, the architect of Coit Tower, and San Francisco’s City Hall. SFAI’s campus was built onto the hillside creating a space that has 13 levels and many unique features, including an original mural by Diego Rivera and the Sculpture Ramp, which connects the original 1926 campus to the lower levels of the 1969 addition. This main campus is the primary location for most discipline specific facilities.

• Maya Smira participated in a group installation in the Venice Biennale three years after graduation

• Ana Teresa Fernandez was interviewed about their work in The Atlantic • Tim Sullivan + Crystal Liu spent three months doing a residency in China • Tristan Cai, Michael Arcega + others started tenure-track teaching positions • Taravat Talepasand had solo shows in Los Angeles written up in the LA

Times, the Huffington Post + Contemporary Art Review • Greg Ito’s solo exhibit named one of the best of the year by Artforum • David Best + Tim Kopra built site-specific installations for music + cultural

festivals like Burning Man + Outside Lands • Aggregate Space Gallery (created by alums Willis + Conrad Meyers) received

a community grant for gallery programming + community engagement • Kathy Goodell received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts • Rocky McCorkle had photographs featured on the cover of photo magazines • Laura Poitras received an Academy Award • Tamra Seal installed solo shows in LA and SF in the same week • Ariel Zaccheo curated at the Museum of Craft and Design • Michelle Mansour led fundraising as Executive Director of Root Division,

an arts non-profit founded by alums • Larry Sultan had a major retrospective at SFMOMA • Evan Reiser, Juan Pablo Pacheco + others started a gallery in their apartment• Javid Soriano’s project was supported by Sundance Institute Documentary

Film Program • Jenny Odell installed a major public art project • Melissa Koziebrocki completed a residency at the Skowhegan School of

Painting + Sculpture • Laura Hyunjhee Kim participated in a pop-up art fair in Times Square • Eric Araujo fabricated custom objects for exhibitions at the Guggenheim • Amir Esfahani was featured on reality TV doing covert performances • Sharrissa Iqbal completed a PhD at UC Irvine • Ben Venom was featured on CBS Sunday Morning

In the last three years alone, SFAI alumni accomplished everything listed here (and more). This could be your path. This could be where you go next...

“I propose that one attribute of the productions of those makers we call artists, historically and culturally, constitutes a kind of prosthetic activity to address an unforgettable and irreconcilable absence. To forget would be to surrender to incompleteness, an untenable and intolerable state. The production, the work of the artist, is intended to, however imperfectly, reestablish completeness. – Richard Berger, SFAI Faculty 1970-2015

SFAI is a private, non-profit institution. We are accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD). SFAI was first accredited on April 30, 1954.

Photography: Vita Hewitt (SFAI MFA 2007) Bryan Hewitt (SFAI MFA 2004) unless otherwise notedPhoto by Michelle Jarvis (pp. 2-3) Design:Beth Abrahamson (SFAI PB 2012)

Learn more about SFAI:

San Francisco Art Institute800 Chestnut St San Francisco, CA 94133admissions@sfai.edu415.749.4500

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