SCHOOL DAZE

I was four years out of college, married and getting set to be divorced before I returned to art school. This four years did more to prepare me for the life of an artist than any time I spent going to class. When I decided to go back it was for all the right reasons. No longer was I avoiding the draft, chasing girlfriends or escaping from the tar mop. This time I was buying myself time to refine my chops as an artist. Luscious had met someone at Jr. college, who paid a lot more attention to her than I did. I used this as an excuse to call an end to it. Of course when it did end I was a mess. I went to a shrink to help get over the hump, who happened to know of an agency that would pay for my classes at The San Francisco Art Institute. It was called Vocational Rehabilitation.
Voc. Rehab. was set up to help G.I.s coming back to "the World" with training for things like truck drivers and air conditioning installers. There was nothing that said they couldn't pay for art school. So it was in 1977 I matriculated at SFAI sucking on the government teat. They paid my tuition and gave me a stipend for art supplies. All I had to do was keep seeing the shrink and not flunk out. After a while I just mailed in my pay vouchers to the psychiatrist who cashed them without ever seeing me. We both felt I was cured. I got the money for my "art supplies"out of the school store by standing in front of the door and offering to put Marin County house wives' expensive paints and canvas onto my account in return for their cash. This was the beginning of my conceptual career. My art was becoming invisable.
After being too late for Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury, I finally hit a scene right on the tip. SF in '77 was in the throes of its punk rock hey day. It wasn't unusal to see the Dils playing in some drawing class or The Mutants crashing around in the SFAI auditorium. A healthy cross pollination existed between artists and musicians. We all stole off each other. Long hair got spiked and dyed. Clubs sprang up everywhere with names like Valencia Tool and Die, The Deaf Club, A-Hole, Mabuhay, Club Foot and Temple Beautiful.
In class I met El Prof. (then El Estudiante) Karen Finley, Debora Iyall (Romeo Void), Sally Webster (The Mutants) as well as visiting artists like Chris Burden, Bill Wegman, Linda Montano, David Ireland, David Ross, etc. The driving force behind the class was artist Howard Fried, an enigmatic, bearded video/conceptualist who sometimes just sat in a chair and stared at the wall as we blew joints and entertained each other. After a year they let me in graduate school without a degree. The divorce was final and I was finally producing mature work. I bought a hot IBM selectric typewriter and began to write and do video tapes. It would still be a few years before video cameras became available to consumers. My first tape was called "School Days"- a grainy B&W piece shot with a bulky port-a-pack. I give it half a star.