Jeff Gunderson joined the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981 and currently serves as its institutional memory in addition to his professional duty as librarian/archivist. SFAI is the oldest and perhaps greatest art school west of the Mississippi, with a photo department established by Ansel Adams and alumni including Angela Davis, Kehinde Wiley, Barry McGee, Mark Rothko, Kathryn Bigelow, Catherine Opie, and others. Despite facing closure in March, the school recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, graduating a BFA class of six students during the pandemic year. Their art is now on display at the school’s Walter and McBean Galleries in the “Harbinger” exhibition, which runs through September 24. It’s free and accessible to the public, so go check it out. We chatted with Gunderson about how San Francisco has maintained its creative spirit despite all of the money (which dates back to the Gold Rush and continues to this day), some of the school’s more well-known graduates (including a member of the Grateful Dead), and the school’s future. “I believe there will be new possibilities and new ways of thinking, and people will be eager to attempt to construct a future out of them,” he predicts.
Some of it stems from the assumption that you can’t travel any farther west than San Francisco; there’s nowhere else to go. When I think of San Francisco in the mid-nineteenth century, I think of the book When the World Rushed In. The rest of the world is always flooding in, bringing new ideas with them.
Do you believe that has changed as a result of technological advancements? Isn’t it true that it suffocates fresh ideas?
[Tech] is, in my opinion, simply another representation of how that looks in San Francisco. There was the
Gold Rush, the late-nineteenth-century building boom, the railroad of the same era, and the post-World War II era when everyone came here — whether it was for the Summer of Love. Money always seems to end up in San Francisco.
Do you believe that these infusions of riches are beneficial or detrimental to young artists? I know that cultural professionals, whether from the opera, museums, the symphony, or elsewhere, are concerned that what they’re doing is suddenly deemed “old school” and that people won’t be interested. But I believe that artists have a strong desire to create art and that they will do it regardless of their environment, whether it’s the computer world or the 1980s finance world. Selling work has always been linked to money, although people here have never been very interested in that element. “Oh, someone respects my effort,” people here remark. “I’m sure there’s something I’m doing wrong.” Illustration, graphic design, and other pre-professional degrees are not available at SFAI. How has it maintained its ideology of art for the sake of art?
People in this town have always said, “I’ll be loyal to myself.” They aren’t necessarily illustrators. People here may portray not just their own ideas but also other people’s ideas, and they can undertake commercial work at any moment. However, I believe they want to have their own voice. Such doesn’t always imply “making it,” but in the world of ArtForum or commercial galleries, where they want to quote-unquote, that approach is highly valued. “Find” someone who is different and doing something fascinating.
It’s also a little different for undergraduates compared to graduate students. Graduate students are really destined for greatness in the art world. When I was teaching undergraduates, I used to joke that anybody could go to law school. We have a lot of attorneys who came here to pursue their dreams of being artists after discovering they wanted to be lawyers. I had no idea who had been here and then gone to law school. Then I came across someone who did. [Brian L. Frye, who got an MFA in filmmaking at SFAI before going on to Georgetown Law and just directed CNN’s Our Nixon.]
Are there any artists who have graduated from SFAI about whom you’ve said, “They’re going to do tremendous things”?
[Portrait of Barack Obama] Kehinde Wiley was consistently excellent. The same may be said of Iona [Rozeal] Brown. Barry McGee was the same way — a very quiet student, at least when I met him, but his work was excellent. There have been quite a few.
Is there a common personality attribute among those artists that have contributed to their success?
No, I don’t believe so. I recall the photographer Larry Sultan, who was really pleasant and could blend in with anybody. There have also been lots of individuals who have achieved great success from here and are very content as loners.
Do you believe the school had a factor in their achievement, or do you believe they would have succeeded regardless of where they went?
Some of them probably needed to be here, but not necessarily the most successful ones. Others benefited from being in a place where they could be themselves — and learn to feel comfortable venturing out into the world and expressing themselves in some manner, whether via art or anything else. San Francisco is a part of it, as is the Art Institute, and their fellow students are undoubtedly a significant part of it. And anything they learn from faculty members is a part of it, too — albeit that process also includes [students] choosing, “Well, I don’t need to pay attention to that faculty member’s teaching: “I get what they mean, but I’m going to go a different road.” “I have a tiny band,” Jerry Garcia told one of his professors while he was a student here. “You best have a backup plan for that because it’s not going to work out,” his instructor said. Part of it is the experience: you don’t have to pay attention all of the time.
