Greetings family, friends, and neighbors. Today's story has personal connections that I want to share with my family, and historical connections that (hopefully) may be of interest to other snippet followers. Regardless, thank you for reading "California College of Arts and Crafts"........Bill
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CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF ARTS AND CRAFTS
The arts and crafts movement originated in Europe during the late 19 th century in response to the aesthetics of the machine age by advocating an integrated approach to art, design and crafts. Frederick Meyer, a German born cabinetmaker and arts educator founded the California Guild of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley in 1907. Achieving a high standard of excellence, talented faculty, strong reputation, formal State accreditation, and out-growing several locations by 1922, Meyers established a permanent campus on the four acre estate of coal baron James Treadwell on upper Broadway at the corner of College Avenue in Oakland’s RockridgeDistrict.
I transferred from Oakland City College in 1961 to the highly regarded California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) to complete my graphic design education, earn a BFA Degree and seek a career in advertising design. What I didn’t fully realize at the time was the deep history of the institution, campus, and the significance of many of my extraordinary instructor’s. Robert Bechtle is recognized as one of the earliest photorealists, a small group of painters who strove to capture the realism of photographs in painting, printing and other media. He received a B.A.A. and M.F.A. from CCAC and had been the recipient of numerous awards in local competitions since 1954. Bechtle was an Instructor in Design in the early 1960’s at the time he was beginning to gain National recognition for his mesmerizing realistic prints and paintings. His artwork is found worldwide in galleries, museums and in private collections. Gearge Miyaski had completed his B.F.A., B.A.Ed. and M.F.A Degrees from CCAC when I took several printmaking classes from him in the early 1960’s. At the time he was experimenting with the methods and materials for producing the first color lithographs by a West Coast Abstract Expressionist and had studied with Richard Diebenkorrn, Willem de Kooning and Nathan Oliveira. Miyaski was gaining the reputation of being among the most accomplished artists of his time, went on to teach at Stanford University, be appointed full professor at the University of California. Michael McClure taught poetry at CCAC for over forty years after receiving notoriety for giving his first poetry reading in 1955 alongside Allen Ginsberg, and organizing the famous Six Gallery readings where Ginsberg gave his first public reading of “Howl” and launching the legend of the San Francisco Beat Poets.McClure and Ginsberg repeated the reading to our CCAC 1963vcand 1964 English classes. McClure went on to be a playright, novelist and documentary film maker, often reading his poems with cmusical collaborators. McClure received a Guggenheimv Fellowship, Rockefeller Grant, and among his varied honors and accomplishments, wrote the song “Mercedes Benz” made famous by Janis Joplin.
George Post, Associate Professor of Fine Arts, had been teaching watercolor painting at CCAC since 1947 when I took his popular class to fulfill a B.F.A fine arts requirement.. Post had been a prolific painter since the early 1920’s and resisted many teaching opportunities until CCAC offered him a two day a week teaching position on location with his students. The painting style that he past on to his students was to capture the essence of design and feeling of the subject with a minimum of brush strokes, rather than produce traditional realistic pictures. George Post’s watercolors have been exhibited in one person shows, galleries, art museums, and group shows highlighting California’s reputation of becoming the center of the new movement in watercolor painting.
Ralph Borge had earned a B.F.A., M.F.A. from CCAC and was an Associate Professor of Fine Arts when I took his drawing classes. He had received a Guggenheim grant and his drawings and painting had been exhibited at the de Young and Oakland Museum, and Gumps Gallery. Borge taught at CCAC for forty years before opening Borge Point Reyes Gallery with his artist wife Martha. His symbolic realist paintings and drawings have been exhibited at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and New York Museum of Modern Art, galleries and in private collections.
Wolfgang Lederer was Professor of Design and Chairman of the Department of Design, classically trained in Leipzig and Paris, Wolfgang was a highly experienced advertising, book and package designer for leading firms in Vienna, Prague, Zurich, New York and San Francisco. He was the Art Director at Western Farm Publications and held one man shows and exhibits while teaching advertising art at CCAC. I’m pleased to have worked with Wolfgang in his later years as a friend and publishing colleague through Book Builders West.
In 1996 CCAC opened the first phase of a new permanent San Francisco, and in 2003, changed the name of the institution to California College of the Arts (CCA). The Oakland Campus was formally closed in 2022 and it was announced that the property would be developed for mixed residential use, however as of this date the abandoned historic Treadwell Estate and CCAC campus, with more than a century of influencing Bay Area Fine Arts and design, sits forlornly behind a chain link fence awaiting it’s fate.
Bill 8/25
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