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.

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.

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.

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.

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.