Griff Williams
Griff Williams is an American painter, publisher, and gallerist. In 1993 he founded Gallery 16 and the pioneering fine art printmaking workshop Urban Digital Color in San Francisco. The exhibition and publishing program has worked with hundreds of artists including Lynn Hershman Leeson, William Kentridge, Deborah Oropallo, Jim Isermann, bell hooks, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen, Mark Grotjahn, Paul Sietsema, Arturo Herrera, Michelle Grabner, and Ari Marcopoulos.
Williams has also designed and published dozens of acclaimed books with the Gallery 16 Editions imprint. His recent books include The Gay Seventies: Hal Fischer (Gallery 16 Editions) and a monograph on the life and artwork of the late San Francisco artist Rex Ray including essays by Rebecca Solnit and Christian Frock (Chronicle Books).
His paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, and the San Jose Museum of Art. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, Flash Art, and Artnews.
The following are excerpts from Griff William’s interview.
Hugh Leeman: Griff, growing up in Butte, Montana, how did your passion for the arts and community building start?
Griff Williams: God, you know, the history of my family in Montana goes back to the pioneers. My mom and dad were raised in Butte. It has an incredible history. The mining, you know, the electrification of North America came out of that Berkeley Pit. It's a remarkable story of labor, and I think in some ways, the legacy of Butte that's most inspirational to me is the fight for labor—the fight for workers’ rights. The labor movement in the United States is largely because of the work that was done in Butte, Montana. And so in some ways, when people think about labor, they rarely think about the arts. But art is a form of labor that isn't as acknowledged and revered as it probably should be, but it's labor nonetheless, and it's largely made up of the working poor. I think that my formative years and certainly my family's relationship to the working-class folks in a mining town in Montana certainly influenced the way I approached my life in the arts.
Moon Mountain 29, Oil and Acrylic on canvas over panel, 41” x 61”
HL: That's incredible. I want to connect that idea of labor and the working poor in Montana to some of your own work. You once wrote, "At the heart of all my paintings is a landscape as I grew to know it in Montana. I use the land as a subject and metaphor. There is a centuries-old tradition of mythologizing the land in both painting and photography. My work has sought to address this." That’s a fascinating statement. Say more about the idea of the land as a metaphor and how you've aspired to address this in your artwork.
GW: Well, I think we think about our relationship to the land as if we're somehow disconnected from it—as if we’re not part of the ecosystem or this complex web. We build these homes and see the environment through these plate glass windows. I’ve often considered just how sheltered we are from the daily realities of understanding where our food comes from or more about the specific place we occupy. Cities definitely disconnect us from those realities. In some ways, the great Western expansion and the stuff that’s become part of the history of American art romanticize the landscape in a way that never felt connected to me. I think about it as a relationship to kind of, you know, you see these reflections that exist to make up an abstract form in my paintings. While they’re born out of this relationship to the landscape, it’s more about thinking about it as a metaphor for introspection or a relationship to a place that's more of an idea than a reality.
Griff Williams and son on the set of Tell Them We Were Here
HL: Beyond your painting, you're a filmmaker. Tell Them We Were Here is your feature-length documentary, co-directed by you and your son, Keelan. Can you talk about the process of working on such an incredible creative endeavor as a feature-length film with your son?
GW: It’s one of the most fulfilling creative achievements of my life, really. Keelan grew up around the art community that I had developed in San Francisco around Gallery 16, and all the music, performances, and exhibitions that filled his life as a child and adolescent became the subject of the film in a way. Having him, watching him grow up in this creative community, and then working with him as a peer to tell the story of these artists within this unique creative community here was really a gift. In retrospect, it seems much more romantic than it actually was. It took us about four years to make the film. Keelan was right out of undergraduate school; he went to film school in LA, and when he got out, he and I started making this documentary. It took us about four years, and we self-financed the whole thing, working on it off and on between other projects for many years. It's a real testament to the spirit and ethos that thrived in San Francisco for a long time. I’m not sure it still exists in the same way, but it certainly did at one time.
Griff on the set of Tell Them We Were Here
HL: I want to come back to that ethos later. The film title itself comes from a statement by the poet and author Bill Berkson: "Tell them we were here." It's meant as a reminder that communities are their own archivists and that the stories we tell determine what lives on. Amidst so much change, what stories are being told and archived right now about your community in San Francisco?
GW: Well, I guess that’s to be determined—what will be archived and what stories we tell. I think the reason I made the film I made was that those stories weren’t being told. I’d never seen San Francisco reflected in a documentary film. Most of the artists that we see in documentaries who live and work in San Francisco, we see them through the lens of some commercial success in New York or posthumous success. You know, you have the Ruth Asawas and the Bruce Connors, you go down the list of all these heroes from the Bay Area whose estates suddenly become the purview of big New York dealers, and their stories are told through the lens of this financial success. What we really wanted to do was something different, which was to ask, “What is it to live and work here? And does the soil that those creative communities grow in change the things that are made here?” I think they do. I think there’s a specific choice to stay, live, and try to create a practice here that is different than other places. Having said that, creative communities wherever they exist, make the place better. And so we wanted to just reflect something of what that means here. We chose eight artists out of, I think we interviewed 60 or 65 artists and photographers and musicians and critics, and distilled it down to eight that we focused on in the film.
Tell Them We Were Here being screened
HL: I want to go back to something you just said—that San Francisco is different than other places. How so?
GW: Well, San Francisco is a complex, often contradictory place. You had the military-industrial complex butting up against the hippies and the beatniks. But the ethos of political action, activism, the Free Speech Movement, all the great music that came out of the '60s and '70s, it infected the place in a way that I think was self-selective. I think people who were looking for part of that in their lives found themselves moving here. It's a transient community. So you get these birds of a feather that gather in a tiny little geographic area, one that did not get consumed by market concerns. There wasn't a thriving art market in San Francisco. And so what that meant for the creative community, I think, was a little more ability to research their work—to investigate ways of operating that weren't simply driven by what was selling and what wasn't. I think that's true in the music that's made here and the art that's made here. You really look for the kind of social practice that came out of the Bay Area—the community-oriented projects with creative practitioners in all kinds of disciplines. I think that was something that was kind of expected for a long time in the Bay Area; that there was this component of everyone's practice that was about lifting the agency of the next guy. And so in the film, we focus on eight people whose work is essentially grappling with these important political issues in their practice.The political issues that they're dealing with—prison reform, homelessness, environment—aren't necessarily the first things you identify when you're looking at the work that is generated by these artists, but they are very central to what they're doing. Rather than make aesthetic choices about who we were going to include, you were looking at the topical issues they were delving into in their studio practice.
Tucker Nichols and Dave Eggers, Family Draw, Patio Music
HL: Connecting that idea with some of the artists you've worked with over the last three-plus decades, you've worked with William Kentridge, Rex Ray, Margaret Kilgallen, and Dave Eggers. What are the standout experiences and stories that you would like to tell to have live on about these interactions with such people?
GW: The way we've invited artists to participate, either through our publishing program or our exhibition program or public performances, is really because we have faith and an interest in the things they do. We've never really curated things in the sense that we go through a studio and decide we want this and that. It's really about giving artists the latitude to build a body of work that they're excited about. In some cases, those bodies of work are distinctly different than the things they’re showing in other galleries simply because they have the opportunity to do something different at Gallery 16. We've talked about it as the freedom to fail, which I think is central to making. When you look at the market-driven studio practices that exist on the East Coast and to a certain extent in Los Angeles, so much of that is driven by what sells and what doesn't. The curiosities, the research, and the investigation that artists are up to when they don't have the pressure of making the same thing over and over again is quite different. We’ve worked with artists in varying degrees of success. We've worked with artists fresh out of grad school and some that are well-known, and in each case, it's about identifying what they want to be investigating at that moment, and we kind of build a body of work around it.
HL: It's interesting. This idea of disconnecting success from a financial marker is quite rare in the water we swim in, in this country, in the art world or not.
GW: Well, we're caught between creativity and commerce at the gallery. There's no other way around it—we have to sell work to be able to stay afloat. But it's the thing that's kind of guided the program and also guided the film. It's the idea of considering a different set of values—what is it that we're championing? The idea that value is something we determine on our own terms, right? It's not a question of a price tag. It's not a question of what collections these things are in or what critics have written about it. It’s a question of whether or not it was successful in a creative lens, and giving artists the freedom to consider that kind of set of values is a kind of driving principle for me.
Opening at G16
HL: You mentioned in a previous interview that Gallery 16’s role has been in "shining visible light on things that are often overlooked in the arts." As Gallery 16 leaves the scene after more than 30 years and you look back at the breadth and depth of community contributions that you've been a part of, what are the most inspirational moments of this past that stick with you?
GW: I don't think I could distill it down. I've learned so much from artists and creative folks that have passed through in some form or another. We've just been so lucky to be inspired routinely. Some of the early things we were investigating at the beginning of the gallery, I think about the work that Margaret Kilgallen did, and Phil Ross. Phil Ross started the first exhibition we did with Margaret. Phil was creating sculpture at that time out of mushrooms, out of mycelium. This was the early '90s. What started out as a studio practice, a concern about how you could take this living matter and turn it into sculptural forms, was something he was investigating in the '90s. He has gone on to create what will probably be a multi-billion dollar company called Mycoworks, which is another great Bay Area story. It's gone from an art practice to a business that's opening up campuses all over the country to create a leather replacement. So rather than be in the leather industry, they're finding replacements that they can literally grow in the laboratory from mushrooms. Phil’s story is a complex and remarkable one, but it's also so perfectly suited to the Bay Area. You're working with all these environmental conditions and questions about the ethics of the food industry, and suddenly he's going to create a thing that could save the planet, all through this artistic inquiry. It's quite remarkable.
G16 art opening
HL: Previously, you've mentioned that David Ireland and Bruce Conner are your heroes. Why is that?
GW: Well, they're two of many heroes. I was lucky enough to know them when I was getting out of grad school. I met David Ireland in grad school and Bruce shortly after. People like those artists, they were so iconoclastic and so of this place. I never really understood, I never really saw anything like the way they were working. And that was true of a lot of artists here. Jim Melchert is a good example. Carlos Villa. I mean, you go through the list of the people that were related to the San Francisco Art Institute, and it's an absolutely remarkable history, and it's really sorely missed. There was a kind of iconoclasm in the working with those particular artists, and they're very different but very influential to me, for sure.
HL: I want to come back to something you said earlier about ethos. Community over capital has long been the ethos of Gallery 16 and seemingly a part of San Francisco’s history, but things feel very different now. So, looking back at this ethos of your gallery for three decades and where the city is now, how might the next generation adopt this ethos and incorporate it into the arts to contribute to the ever-changing community here?
GW: That’s a huge question. I don't even know how to answer it. I really don't. I don't know what advice I would have for young artists, the pressures they're under. Social media has completely changed the way artists exist in the world. Suddenly, they have to be everything. They have to be the PR machine, the exhibition space, the gallerist, and the critic. It's debilitating. They have to know everything about everything at all times. It just doesn't make any sense. I think if I was saying anything to any young artist now, it would be, "Just get off the phone!" Spend more time with actual people. Maybe that's it. One of the things is that San Francisco is not the place it was when I started Gallery 16 either. We were on 16th Street directly across from what was the recycling center on 16th, and it's now the Culinary Academy or something. We had the run of the place. Nobody cared. I mean, you know, the parking, you’d pull up and park at the recycling center, project images on the side of the recycling center's walls at night, and you didn't feel like you were being watched. I think part of the problem at the time was that we thought nobody was paying attention, and probably they weren't. But in hindsight, that allowed us to have the freedom to kind of figure out who we were and what we were doing. The pressures on young artists in this place now—the rents, the crippling cost of living here—I don't know how you do it. I think lots of folks are finding their way towards places that maybe are more accommodating in that respect. Because you can't expect people to know what they missed. It's like showing up at a dinner party and not knowing what people said before you got there. The Bay Area's ethos that thrived here and really infected the place in a beautiful way, the community-oriented part of it, the experimentation, the stuff that you're trying to explain now to a generation of younger folks seems almost impossible. I was on a podcast not too long ago that a young artist currently living in San Francisco was one of the hosts of, and she said, "This doesn't look like the San Francisco that I'm living in now." I can understand that. I don't want to be the old man who is talking about how great it was back in my day. I want this for young generations, but it may not be here. It may be somewhere else, and wherever it happens to be is fine as long as it exists.
G16 opening 100 records
HL: Beyond the gallery and your art practice and the film, you've printed artist editions and books. Today, just like so many things, the printed word and printed images are rapidly undergoing transformation. What is the future of publishing amidst these changes?
GW: Man, I mean, it's always been difficult, and I think the one bright spot is something like you see evidenced in the San Francisco Art Book Fair at Minnesota Street that is so joyful and so thriving. There are so many young people in the small press, independent publishing world that I have a great deal of confidence in the future of it. In that realm of it, I think that larger publishing houses have a real challenge. They're simply narrowing their focus ever more so towards the things that turn a profit for them, and therefore most everything of interest goes out the window, and that's where these independent art publishers pop in. There have always been people willing to spend their own money to do interesting things, and that's what we did over the years. We found the interest in publishing an edition or a multiple or some kind of book project with artists, and we just went about designing and producing it ourselves. Rarely did those things turn a profit, but they functioned in the same way that the gallery does, which is that they were low entry cost or no entry cost in some cases. And they had an effect on a community of people that were seeking it out. So you make small runs, you keep your costs low, and you do interesting things, and hopefully, there are lots of people coming along that are reacting to this overmediated, social media world that we're living in and wanting something tactile. We just now published a book about the late Jim Melchert, who was a real hero to me and a voice of kindness and empathy and encouragement. He was 92 when he died, and there was never a book about his remarkably influential career ever made. And we decided to do it, and we've just published the thing, and it's going to be released in October. The fact that no one in the publishing world, in the art publishing world, ever saw fit to make a book about this legendary career is remarkable to me. It's just dumbfounding. And it's sad that Jim didn't live to see it, but he and I talked about it on many occasions, and I insisted to him that we were going to get the thing done, and we finally did. It's a really beautiful document of this absolutely beautiful art career.
Margaret Kilgallen at G16
HL: You moved Gallery 16 just as the city of San Francisco was coming out of a dot-com bust in the early 2000s. And in 2021, the rent was raised. There's, of course, the pandemic that changes the trajectory of the world. And in 2021, that appeared to be the last show. You've continued on. And now, 30-plus years later, Gallery 16 is closing with this major change. What are your aspirations for the future?
GW: You know, hopefully, it's just a circumstance. I don't think it's closing. I think Gallery 16 will continue in some incarnation or form. The physical location and footprint for all these kind of community centers that I think Gallery 16 has sort of been for a certain segment of the arts community, those locations become important. It's almost like a clubhouse in a way, where you have these like-minded folks that gather together and talk about rigorous ideas, things that you wouldn't be talking about elsewhere. It's important but it's also become complicated by the realities of the greed in San Francisco. The market rate has become punishing to lots of small organizations. The cost of living in San Francisco has become outrageous. And for a place that's never had the thriving art market that other places have, it requires you to change and maybe be a little more nimble or figure out new ways of engaging with an audience. And so I don't think it's the end. I just think it's the end there. I'm hoping that we find ways to continue the kind of creativity and inquiry that we've been up to all these years. It's in me. So, Gallery 16 is going to be wherever I am probably. I take it with me.
Rex Ray exhibit at G16
HL: That's a really good idea to, I think, bring things full circle here—that Gallery 16 is a you, and you take it with you. So as the gallery's physical location says goodbye, what do you want to leave people thinking about amidst the gallery's physical location's goodbye?
GW: Well, I think the things that pop to mind are the things that have always been part of the ethos there. In an age when museums seem to be failing us, in an age where the barrier for entry is always higher, that's not good for the arts. We need a lower cost barrier of entry. We need more inclusion. We need more diversity. It seems like the things that are essential to humankind and important to the arts are exactly the things that are threatened right now. I think everybody's got to fight these impulses that we're seeing in society right now. And part of that is just connecting with each other, being more present, being more physically connected to your neighbors. I think the one thing that the gallery does in a way when it's working is it's a kind of community center. It's a place for esoteric ideas that are threatened almost everywhere else. The first things that happen in totalitarian societies is they lock up the artists, and so having a place for them and continuing to keep your doors open and embrace these kind of radical ideas, that's a political statement and it always has been. It’s a form of resistance, and putting our money where our mouth was, we really invested in the things that we found to be important even when they were losing money. And part of that was to continue to keep our doors open to a community that understood the importance of these ideas.
Sonny Smith at G16
HL: Thank you. I want to go back briefly here. Something you said is very interesting: the idea that galleries when they're operating in a great way are community centers for ideas. Put that in the context of something else you said that was very interesting: that museums are failing us. So tell me more what you mean by this idea that museums are failing us.
GW: Well, you see it everywhere. You see the same artists related to the collections of the board of directors in all of these major museums around the country. You see all the major exhibitions that are fan favorites that occupy this middle-of-the-road that shovels everybody to the gift stores. You eliminate the programming around departments that don't seem to be fulfilling those needs. You see with the firing at SFMOMA over the last few years, this is a trend that we see played out pretty obviously. The new media department has gone by the wayside. The film program has gone by the wayside. The Open Space forum that they used to occupy on the web has gone by the wayside. So much of what's happened is in favor of blockbuster Kusama shows or whatever is going to get people in through the door. And those ticketed prices are kind of the antithesis of the independent galleries, right? Which take all the risk, which find work long before it has a financial value, which open their doors for free to the public to come in and experience this stuff without any cost of entry. I think that's why we're seeing the museums fail us. Cowtowing to all the pressure that we're seeing from the White House, exhibitions getting canceled, images getting removed from exhibitions—it's shameful. And if they're not fighting back against these things and if they're solely driven by the economic realities, it's a kind of follow-the-leader business. They see it working in one place and they adopt those methods, and it just seems like everything else. We were talking about the publishing business earlier. The museums are very much like this, where you see the same half a dozen artists over and over and over, and it really doesn't seem to reflect the diversity and depth of an art community, a worldwide art community. It certainly doesn't. And so, if they're failing, they're failing because they're not presenting a wide enough and diverse enough representation of what it means to be human right now.
HL: Well said. Griff Williams, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate what you've done over the course of your career as a gallerist, and it's wonderful to hear your ideas. Thank you.
GW: Yeah, my pleasure.
