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Wally Hedrick (page 3)
Choosing Art School
When I got out of Korea, I had the GI Bill. That
was crucial. I knew about the California School of Fine Arts [the
San Francisco Art Institute]. I had visited there before; that
was when I met Clyfford Still. I didn't know who he was. Here
I was, a young guy with a couple of canvases under my arm, and
I walked into the patio at the school. There was this tall, thin
gentleman. He said, "Hi, what've you got under your arm there?"
And I showed him these two god-awful paintings. They were just
terrible. He paused, and then he said, "Well, we might be
able to help you."
I knew I wanted to go there, but at the time
[before the GI Bill], I didn't have any money. My father was a
used-car salesman and my mother was a housewife; they sure weren't
going to pay for it. I mean, the idea of moving to San Francisco
so I could go to college was just unthinkable. Nobody in their
family had ever gone to college. But later, because I had the
GI Bill, I knew I could do it.
Going North
I had packed up everything in my car and drove
to San Francisco. I didn't have anything except for a few things
and my car. I got here at about four in the afternoon. I'm driving
up Franklin and I get up to Sutter Street; I see a sign saying,
"Studios for rent." I didn't know anything about studios,
except artists' studios. Anyway, I rented one. I was very lucky,
I might've had to sleep in the park because I had nowhere to go.
I didn't know anybody.
At the Art Institute
I don't believe that art schools train artists.
At the Art Institute I was around people I stole ideas from. Maybe
I've taken some of their ideas and pushed them a little further.
You can't learn to be an artist.
The 6 Gallery
I helped start the 6 Gallery when I was a student
with these people who had also come up from Pasadena: Deborah
Remington, who is a painter in New York now; John Ryan, who is
a poet; Jack Spicer, who is a poet; David Simpson, who is a professor
at UC Berkeley; and painter Hayward King.
There were six of us. The 6 Gallery was located
at 3119 Fillmore St. Now it's a hardware store. In San Francisco
in the late '40s, early '50s, there was no venue for artists like
us, or anybody really. There were a couple of galleries that showed
contemporary work, but they were sort of holdovers from the Depression.
The 6 Gallery was very successful. People were
starting to get recognized. Allen Ginsberg first read "Howl"
there.
The Beatniks
It was a lot of fun, and I got a lot work done.
I knew the term, but I never thought of myself as being beat.
We were all reading Kerouac then. We began to see that maybe there
was something going on, but personally I just sort of went underground.
And I did what I did. I know it sounds like I'm dropping names,
but Ginsberg was a very close friend of mine. We hung out together
in North Beach. He didn't look then like he did later. He was
wearing suits and ties and worked at a bank.
But like I said, it was fun. There were some
of the best parties I ever went to, and sometimes we would take
the party on the road, so to speak. Once, when the school was
having financial difficulties, we made a casket, and the casket
had a model of the school on top of it, and on the side of it,
it said, "Art is dead." So the whole student body marched
down to City Hall with it. We went right through the Financial
District. It came off just beautifully.
The first demonstration against the Vietnam War
was designed and executed in the back yard of the Art Institute.
We went to the Presidio and we faced soldiers with guns. This
was '57 or so.
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