“Dude, Where’s My Shool?” talking the demise of SFAI with artist Josh Hash & writer Margaret Crane
In 2022, the San Francisco Art Institute closed its doors after serving students and the San Francisco art scene for 151 years. Though this institution has one of the most start-studded art historical legacies, its board of trustees and appointed admins had unfortunately made numerous mistakes and held little accountability. After initiating a risky move to secure a loan for the Fort Masson graduate program expansion, where the historic Chestnut campus was placed as collateral, the school’s enrollment nose-dived due to COVID-19 and numerous internal issues. This unfortunate combination of events led to the institution’s demise and what has inspired the post-mortem group show of late-stage SFAI artists, titled, “Dude Where’s My School?”
This exhibition is curated by Los Angeles artist and SFAI alumni Josh Hash at the artist-run gallery space, 120710 in Berkeley, CA. The following Q&A was conducted as a part of a research project for Margaret Crane's latest article covering SFAI for East of Borneo Mag. Margaret Crane is an independent writer and the former Media Communications director for Cal Arts where she served for 16 years. She’s also an esteemed graduate from Stanford, where she earned her MFA in 1997.
Lunch time at SFAI circa 2015, courtasy of artist Mo Skye for the 120710 group exhibition, “Dude Where’s My School?”
[00:00:00.170] - Margaret Crane
What program were you in and when did you go?
[00:00:05.890] - Josh Hash
So I was technically part of the painting department. I was there from 2013 to 2016, and I had transferred in from a community college here in Los Angeles. But it was an awesome three years. I spent a lot of time painting, but really it was time for absorbing this art historical canon that was totally foreign to me. It was a lot to process as a young man. It was a super pivotal part of my life, just having the freedom to explore new genres, mediums and ideas. It was a pretty action-packed three years.
[00:00:37.260] - Margaret Crane
Yeah, and I bet they were fun too.
[00:00:39.500] - Josh Hash
Yeah, for sure. A lot of good friends, too.
[00:00:42.830] - Margaret Crane
That's part of the genius of the Art Institute, that it was brainy and fun and serious all at the same time. It was special.
[00:00:54.690] - Josh Hash
Yeah, I think there was something like I had imagined Cal Arts being in the 70s. Kind of an anti anti-curriculum, free-spirited way of approaching art and thinking about visual communication. It felt like SFAI was one of the last holdouts of that kind of energy and I really appreciated that.
[00:01:13.080] - Margaret Crane
Yeah, I worked at CalArts for the last 16 years after the Art Institute, for sure. I have a sense of it. It got less free towards the end.
[00:01:24.890] - Josh Hash
Definitely, as things usually do.
[00:01:28.750] - Margaret Crane
Free to more corporate, but things change. I should tell you a little bit about the article I'm doing, it is probably going to be about 3000 words, maybe more. So it's a feature-length, but it's not super long. I want to cover what happened, which I'm still trying to fully understand, as many people are. But I also think that I'm really interested in how the Art Institute is continuing to live. And I think that's a really important part of the story. I think that's where you come in because that's exactly what you're doing with your exhibition.
[00:02:09.990] - Josh Hash
For sure! I'm really glad that you picked up on that. I did notice that in your initial outreach. I think that's super important. 150 years of legacy doesn't just disappear overnight.
There are a lot of people that are coming away from this thinking they were going to have a lot more of a relationship to that school and are now trying to figure out their relationship to art. What relationships to people within that student body looks like. And yeah, this show definitely is a way to get some of the later-year SFAI people together in a way that gives us a platform to support each other. That is just important in the arts, full stop.
[00:02:49.800] - Margaret Crane
So what gave you the idea?
[00:02:52.550] - Josh Hash
So, I mean, I was watching the slow train wreck of SFAI over COVID and everything that unfolded. So I was involved with the Alumni Association, doing some shows here and there. I say the alumni association, but it was really just a bunch of artists from the school that banded together to do stuff. I always appreciated that. I like the idea of the students being able to do things for themselves. I think there's a lot of that ethos with SFAI, just going to try things and do things for yourself.
Looking at art history, there's always a cohort that frames groups of artists over time. Right? And that becomes their platform for the next things that they do. The shows that they're in, the galleries that represent them, the residencies, all of that. And I feel like there were a couple of people that were pretty close-knit when I was there. But when we had come off of SFAI, it was a struggling school, and it had already been struggling for a while.
In a way we had no cohort, and then now you're in this moment post-COVID, where there's just tons of media, tons of consumption. Anyone can be making art or connecting with people anywhere. That linear cohort environment or that feeling was nowhere to be found, really. And so I started thinking about what does this moment in art history look like? What does this moment for SFAI and for the Bay Area look like? It's coinciding with this time where institutions are not supporting artists as much or as directly, or they have become more corporate and less in touch with the kind of grassroots vibe that this all started with. So that's where the term, “No- School” artists comes from. Or the No-School generation, if you think about it. So that was of interest for me on a curatorial level. And then I thought, as an artist, what a great excuse to get together with some friends and do something.
Polaroid photo of Josh Hash from his time living at the SFAI dorms on Sutter St. in SF, 2014
[00:04:52.490] - Margaret Crane
Did you you kind of coined the term “no-school.”
[00:04:56.510] - Josh Hash
Yeah! It's a term that we were throwing around, me and Jonathan, and it's something that I think makes sense. It’s a term that speaks to how this generation is represented.
[00:05:07.010] - Margaret Crane
Yeah, in a couple of ways.
[00:05:11.490] - Josh Hash
Literally.
[00:05:13.490] - Margaret Crane
Yeah, it's nice. Well, did you do some online shows?
[00:05:19.990] - Josh Hash
When?
[00:05:20.980] - Margaret Crane
During Covid?
[00:05:22.620] - Josh Hash
So I had done a show that I was actually super proud of, and nobody got to see it in person. It was at the Torrance Art Museum. I had done this group show that was focused on basically the history of Southern California minimalism. Thinking about it as a push back or push away from the kind of definitions that we saw on the East Coast and starting with some of the tried-and-true people that you'd expect, all the way to artists working today. I was thinking about works that maybe are not conventionally seen in kind of a minimalist canon, but making the argument for how these things evolved from minimalism. Really coming down to the thesis that the East Coast focused on a form of minimalism that was based on materials totally devoid of narrative or even authorship, really, it was very much about the work and its relevance to historical assumptions about sculpture & painting. Whereas on the West Coast, a lot of that was much more influenced by lifestyle, environment, and things that were tied to context. So, thinking about the way narrative got wound up in minimalism on the West Coast versus the East Coast, I found that very fascinating. It had been influential to my studio work and what I was curating in galleries at the time.
I was super psyched on that. And then, of course, Quarantine happened, and so we had to lock it down. that show only existed online, but was meant to be in person.
[00:06:49.140] - Margaret Crane
What's its title?
[00:06:50.850] - Josh Hash
[00:06:52.770] - Margaret Crane
Oh, nice. Yeah, I'll look for that.
[00:06:56.170] - Josh Hash
Plays to the “Under the Big Black Sun” show at Moca that predated the TAM show by about a decade. But yeah, it was great. I can send you a link as well.
[00:07:04.600] - Margaret Crane
Oh, please do. Yeah, I'd love to see that, for sure. I think there's a lot of emotion around the Institute closing, I'm finding, while I'm doing interviews, and I found that there's a great Instagram, and forgive me, I didn't check it before. One of the artists in your show, I didn't check her name, did a really beautiful Instagram post where she describes what she thinks about the Art Institute. Have you seen that?
[00:07:35.920] - Josh Hash
Yeah, we've been doing a couple of them. It might have been Felicita Norris.
[00:07:39.970] - Margaret Crane
It was Felicita!Yeah. That was fantastic! I have the link. I want to maybe quote that. But tell me about what's the feeling around this exhibition?
[00:07:52.950] - Josh Hash
It's definitely mixed, I think you're probably observing that firsthand. When I started, it felt like an excuse to come back to the Bay and reconnect with people. So it was a little bit joyous on that level. But then, as I started talking to people for the show, much like you're probably finding, especially when talking to faculty, some people are really upset about it. They're still hurt by it. And that's equally valid. It started to bring this kind of somber tone to the way we were approaching the exhibition. It was to be celebratory of the fact that we're still here making work, sure, but also to be cognizant of the loss that we all experienced. I think that some of us are still mourning that. I am too on a certain level, but I had to move to LA very quickly after graduating because of the cost of living, so I had to say my goodbyes earlier on.
To know that it's actually gone now is a whole nother thing, though. People are dealing with that in their own ways, and some people are taking that into their work, which I think is interesting. And then some people are really just trying to move past it. Maybe this show becomes an opportunity for that as well. However people are approaching it, I want this to be an open forum for them to present work that they feel is reflective of themselves as an artist.
[00:09:28.560] - Margaret Crane
So, what are some examples of work in the show?
[00:09:30.570] - Josh Hash
Well, Felecita has this amazing painting. “Trust No Bitch.” She's always been an incredible figure painter. I had met her when she was visiting her Grads program at Stanford. Oliver Hawk Holden is another friend of mine who actually was going to school the same year that I was there. He has a massive mural that I think everyone's going to get a kick out of. It actually had come back from a Facebook commission that he had done. Facebook is cutting their SF offices now and returning artworks. I thought there was a nice parallel there in terms of the way arts infrastructure and support is eroding in the city and how we can try to push back on that. There’s kind of a poetic duality that comes with that piece. We have 20 artists in the show, so it's going to be a pretty good mix of people, different disciplines, from sculpture to installation to painting.
I think there's going to be something there for everyone in terms of taste.
[00:10:42.990] - Margaret Crane
Yeah. What do you think people will take from that? What do you want viewers to understand from the show?
[00:10:52.190] - Josh Hash
I mean, for us, it's really just highlighting a group of artists associated with the later years of SFAI and bring them together in a way that people can get a bird's eye view of what's happening in the Bay. Like, where are these SFAI artists today? And hopefully, find a way to reengage with them and support us.
Without an arts institution tied to us, we really want to start fostering relationships with artists & patrons independently. That's the big mantra for me. I think the more means of production and the more means of our network we can give to the artists to control themselves, ensures that our legacy (and theirs) is protected. We're seeing now that institutions are often not doing a good job of providing lasting ethical infrastructure to art communities. Instead a lot of art world activity is fostering boom & bust cycles around individual artists.
Looking at ways to solve this really is my focus and my takeaway. But as long as people can come enjoy themselves and maybe find some art that they want to support, that would be a win for all of us.
[00:11:44.660] - Margaret Crane
Yeah, I agree with that. That the more artists can own their own world in all its aspects, creative, financial, the whole thing, definitely infrastructure, all of it, the better off they are, for sure.
[00:12:00.170] - Josh Hash
That's really what inspired this Space 120710, which I started with Jonathan. Right now, we're testing out different models to support the artists. Going into this as a non-commercial space, making sure that artists can use this as a platform, network, & bring their own energy to the space, feels very reminiscent of what Fluxus and other collectives were doing before the internet. Right? In terms of getting together and really doing their own thing. I love that! I nerded out on that when I was in SFAI and always imagined how cool it would be to have that ethos in the art world again. So it's cool now, ten years after graduating, coming full circle and having something like that. That part feels great.
[00:12:40.760] - Margaret Crane
So I didn't realize that you're, like, a co-curator, co-director with Jonathan.
[00:12:46.730] - Josh Hash
Yeah, Jonathan and I were talking about a lot of these kinds of issues in the art world and where artists were at. Both of us had a passion for the arts and wanted to fix broken systems. We're both making work as artists, and we're trying to figure out a way to build a community around the artists that we know in the Bay Area. So this was a project that we started developing, and we just opened on July 15 with our first show curated by Oliver, who has the piece in this show. So, yeah, we got a really good turnout and lots of appreciation, and we want to keep dialing that forward and inviting people to curate and make this an alternative platform for the Bay area. One, for really quality shows within the bay where people can discover talented artists, and then, two, have it be a platform that artists can earn better percentages on sales and use us for their own careers. We want to be a place where people can form their own networks and all of that. We're very fluid in how this will look, but we're open to feedback from artists and are steering the ship kind of collectively.
That's the goal.
[00:13:45.660] - Margaret Crane
Did Jonathan go to SFAI?
[00:13:48.070] - Josh Hash
No. He's been working on tech startups and different things. I know he was teaching at Berkeley, actually, for some time, and so he definitely had an affinity for students and people coming up in the area. And so, yeah, we just put our heads together, and he had this wonderful space that was being underutilized on his lot. We thought that would be perfect for a gallery and some studios.
[00:14:14.030] - Margaret Crane
Fantastic.
[00:14:15.650] - Josh Hash
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
[00:14:17.410] - Margaret Crane
So you're in the tech world also, right?
[00:14:20.050] - Josh Hash
A little bit. My background is more in marketing & curation. I was running programs for a gallery here in Los Angeles for about three years after SFAI. I worked at the Getty for some time, doing events and stuff. So I was on the peripheral of tech thorugh marketing promotion and got exposed to it. I aslo recently designed an NFT CRM project to help artists and that turned into a startup called Blocksee. So yeah I guess I am but it all comes from this interest in having artists own their own means of distribution.
[00:14:48.430] - Margaret Crane
So you continue your art practice along with your professional work practice?
[00:14:59.040] - Josh Hash
Yes. I’m still making some pieces. I'll actually have some more recent works in the show.
[00:15:12.790] - Margaret Crane
How do you describe your work?
[00:15:14.790] - Josh Hash
Since COVID, I really struggled with traditional mediums like painting on canvas. And maybe this is kind of in reaction to SFAI, too. I thought more and more, especially after that minimalism show, about the way materials inform my practice and the way that I connect to them.
I noticed that there was this huge push in 2020 for the identity politic and everyone started depicting themselves, or their trauma, as paintings on canvas. There are these traditional forms and formats, that I understand make sense in a familiar commercial application, but we've been a bit indoctrinated in assuming that these are the materials that we should make art out of.
I became very interested in pushing away from that assumption and understanding things that were more native to my immediate environment. So these postcards, these small postcards that were sent from Los Angeles, I thought were just this really cool, almost like indigenous material for me.
On top of that, there was such a sentiment for connection in the letters that were written on the back. That colloquial language resonated with me in quarantine and was applicable to so many different people's experiences. Sometimes, even 100 years after that letter was originally written.
I thought there was something so humbling about that. So I started this series of what I call, “Reliquary Memes,” which is basically playing to the Catholic tradition of taking objects from a landscape or a person and preserving them in these ornate folkish containers. That led to this series where I'm taking these old postcards, taking snippets from the letters that they wrote to each other, and then recontextualizing the messages via these 3D time capsule Memes to preserve their memories, my relationship to the landscape, and also examine this colloquial language that connects us throughout time.
[00:16:56.330] - Margaret Crane
Do you have images of those online?
[00:16:58.760] - Josh Hash
I do, yeah, definitely on my Instagram. There's a lot @Jhash93. I also have my website, which is studiohash.art, and I'll be posting more through the 120710 handle. But yeah, if you're in the area or if you ever want to connect, it sounds like you're in LA. Happy to show you some of the work in person sometime, too.
[00:17:20.910] - Margaret Crane
Oh, I'd love to see it. It sounds neat. What do you take with you from the experience of being at SFAI both as an artist and a person in the professional world?
[00:17:38.850] - Josh Hash
That's a great question. For me, when I came into the Arts Institute, I was dealing with a lot in my life, not really able to articulate all of it, and had a lot of things that I had to work through on a personal level. Really didn't know that much about art. I actually came into this almost by accident. It was someone that had found me from the recruiting office at SFAI that visited Santa Monica College where I was studying art at the time.
At that time, in my mind, I grew up in Southern California, had always made short videos in high school, I thought I was going to be a film major. They said, well, everything you applied with was a drawing or a painting. So they were like, well, “why don't you apply as a painting major?” I was so worried that I didn't know a lot about painting, but they said you should come apply, and you'll learn and you'll refine some of the things that you're clearly already interested in.
I thought that makes sense. So I did. Came up to SF and then quickly found out how wide the canon of art really was, how many different ways you could approach something, and how unique art could be to each person.
It helped me divulge and process those internal narratives and articulate viewpoints that gave context to my position in the world. That is the main thing I got from SFAI.
I had my eyes open to that whole arena of thought. I found that to be very transformative, just in the way that I was able to conduct myself and articulate things that I was navigating in the world.
A lot of my practice, I think, is a reflection of that and the things that are happening in my life. It stuck with me as a way to navigate. It's with me as much today as I think it was when I was at SFAI.
No matter what happens at the school, I don't think anyone can take that from me. So it's something that I feel close to my heart about, and I have a kind of nostalgic sentiment towards SFAI because of that.
I hope that other people had a positive outcome as well. It would be a shame to know that if a school closes, that somehow you lose a part of what you gained there. But I don't think that's true. I think that people walk away more dynamic because of it.
[00:19:49.290] - Margaret Crane
Yeah. And I think that's true. People have brought it up. And if I think about it, I felt that way. I mean, I never thought about it consciously, but there's a way where being personal was perfectly comfortable within the context of the Art Institute. It was fine. And as far as making art, it was encouraged. It was encouraged to be individual and mind your own personal self.
[00:20:19.990] - Josh Hash
Yeah. And I think it gave us a safe place to explore that. There were definitely times when maybe my articulation or delivery was not as eloquent as it could have been, or was too on-the-nose, or maybe a little too personal or whatever, but just going through that process, the trial and error, exploring different mediums, different ideas, was valuable for life.
How do I take this emotion and translate it into an experience that someone can look at and critique? Or learn from. Or that i can learn from.
That's very unusual, I think, for most people in their lives and how they connect with visual imagery. A lot of that's been overlooked, especially in my generation. So I was glad to have that.
I don't think it's something that I could have even asked for, or known that I needed, but I found it nonetheless. And that's what feels special.
[00:21:08.470] - Margaret Crane
I like that. I really loved this one line in the description of the exhibition…
[00:21:17.470] - Josh Hash
Sure.
[00:21:18.110] - Margaret Crane
“The demise of SFAI proves allegorical to a pivotal moment in contemporary art where No-School artists are tasked with governing their own networks, infrastructure, and legacy.” And you did talk about this early on in our conversation, but as we're winding up, I wanted to, I don't know, just kind of check in on that again.
[00:21:44.770] - Josh Hash
Yeah. No, 100%. I think it's important that anytime someone tries to brand a group of artists or put them in touch with collectors, it's really like, how do we encompass this cohort? Why are they significant, right? There's something that's usually unifying between them, and that's harder and harder to find these days as narratives are less linear.
But I always remembered the Young British Artist School and the show that Damien Hirst had put on that really created a career for Tracy Emmon and all the people that came out of that. That was something I always was yearning for at SFAI and looking for as we got out.
I just assumed we were going to have like 20 artists coming out of there, that we were all friends, and we were all going to be making work really going hard and building our careers together. Of course, that doesn't happen coming out of art school, especially undergrad. People go in a million different directions. In this case, the school itself fell apart, and it was sort of this weird antithesis to what we had been taught.
I think a lot about even in the LA scene, right, the Cool School, and how people had to define a niche for a market to differentiate them in this art canon. The idea of a school, literal or ideological, was a big part of that canonization.
And now, of course, as everyone says, there are no more movements anymore, or that painting is dead. I think that we still need to continue our own narratives, at the very least, to make sure that we still have a place in this canon for ourselves.
It would be kind of asinine to think that all the great art could only have existed in the 20th century. There are still cool things to be made. Just as there are still interesting thoughts to be examined. Us artists that are working today are working on that. So the “No -School” banner becomes our calling card. I thought it was a good and appropriate term to place on us as we try to reestablish things for ourselves and really govern our own legacies beyond the centralized influence of an institution.
[00:23:36.870] - Margaret Crane
Well said. I love that. You're good. No, I really like that. So I think we just about did it in half an hour.
[00:23:46.510] - Josh Hash
I know. Proud of us. We got it right on time.
[00:23:49.450] - Margaret Crane
I think you answered them all now, and like I said, I'm interviewing a ton of people, so I'm not going to use a lot of any interview, so if there's anything you want to highlight about the Art Institute or if you have any additional thoughts let me know.
[00:24:10.670] - Josh Hash
Yeah, I hope that whatever remains of that school can be protected. I think that it should be a city landmark. It's a shame to see everything in flux right now, but I really do hope that it's a place that we can come back and visit, whether it's maybe a public museum now instead of a private institution. I think it's going to be on the city, the board, and anyone that's really involved in this bankruptcy process to really think about what kind of value we can preserve with that institution and understand the value of its legacy. It’s super important, and I would hate to see it just get knocked down for some condos.
[00:24:48.510] - Margaret Crane
That'd be Gnarly or a tech company or something. I don't know if they'd want to because it's such a decrepit building, beautifully decrepit.
[00:24:58.990] - Josh Hash
Yeah. They'll have to figure that one out. But I think it lives on, at least in our memories for now, and hopefully, we can honor it in a more meaningful way in the future.
[00:25:08.850] - Margaret Crane
That's great. Well, thank you. That's wonderful. I hope to see the show. I'm going to go up to the Bay Area for the story, but I can't be there for the opening, but no worries. I will see your show when I’m up there.
[00:25:20.860] - Josh Hash
Yeah, it'll be up until September 23. I'll be coming back up for the closing reception to pick up some work. I do have a couple of friends who have some work from LA. That I'll be driving up and bringing back. If you're up anytime within that period, let me know I would love to connect, and if not, I am happy to connect over Instagram, and stay tuned for the article. I'm really excited to see what you're writing and what other people have to say about the school.
[00:25:44.860] - Margaret Crane
I still have people to talk to, elderly art teachers returning from Nepal, and it's really some neat, wide spectrum of people that I'm talking to. All of them are wonderful.
[00:26:02.200] - Josh Hash
Very cool.
[00:26:03.240] - Margaret Crane
Thanks. Good luck with the show. It was really good talking to you, and let me know if you have any questions.
[00:26:08.160] - Josh Hash
Likewise, Margaret, take care.
