Sam Francis: Three Short Films
18th Street Arts Center has been collaborating over the past year with the Sam Francis Foundation to research their deep archive of oral histories around Sam Francis and his network of artistic influence in Santa Monica to add to their Culture Mapping 90404 project (culturemapping90404.org), as well as create a series of oral history mini-documentaries unveiling new revelations about the art scene in Santa Monica and the larger region over the past 60 years. After a competitive process, Tiana Alexandria Williams, a USC graduate student in Cinema and Media Studies who specializes in archives, oral histories, and documentary filmmaking, was selected as the Inaugural Sam Francis Media Fellow.
Sam Francis kept several studios and homes on the West Side of LA over the 60s, 70s, and 80s, which was an exciting era of artistic exploration and production in Santa Monica. By delving into extensive archives and conducting rare interviews with two of Francis’s sons and extended network, Williams created a three-episode documentary series, focusing in on Francis’s family home (Canyon Roots), his influence on emerging artists, printmakers, and curators (Fostering the Arts), and his interest in C.G. Jung and dreams (Dreams).
This documentary series is a collaboration between 18th Street Arts Center and the Sam Francis Foundation.
Part 1: Canyon Roots
Sam Francis grew up in San Mateo, near San Francisco, but spent his childhood summers in Santa Monica. Though he went on to live in several other countries, including France and Japan, this episode explores Francis’s deep connection to Santa Monica, and his eventual return there. Osamu Francis, the first son of Sam Francis and his third wife, Mako Idemistu, describes the iconic home on West Channel road as complementing his father’s artwork, with its lighting, openness, and use of color. The natural beauty of Santa Monica, including the ocean, the sun, and the environment in which he lived, all had a significant impact on his work. [Runtime: 9:07 Minutes]
Part 2: Fostering the Arts
Sam Francis was at the center of a web of relationships, connections, and initiatives that were an influential part of fostering the unique and important arts scene in the Los Angeles region. To this end, he opened the Litho Shop in Santa Monica in 1970, which became an important part of his life, not only because of the work he had produced there, but also because of the connections and relationships he had formed with the people who worked there. Prints expanded his artistic process and the way he approached his work, and the studio became an important home for emerging artists and master printers in the city. Francis also leveraged his work and his reputation to help establish art institutions throughout the region, laying the foundation for the international arts capital Los Angeles would become. [Runtime: 14:54 Minutes]
Part 3: Dreams
Sam Francis believed that in order to be healthy, well, or his truest self, he needed to integrate the light and dark aspects of his personality. This episode explores the importance of dreams in Francis’s cosmology, worldview, and ultimately, in his artwork. Francis used to make his children write down and draw their dreams in a journal as they were growing up, and friends recalled regular discussions about dreams and their interpretation. This interest grew from a devotion to Jungian psychology (also called “analytical psychology” by its progenitor, Carl Jung), which sought to bring the unconscious into the present through a narrative exploration of dreams, fantasy, and meditation. [Runtime: 14:52 Minutes]