Griff Williams (born January 23, 1966), is an American painter, publisher, art instructor, filmmaker, and gallerist. He owns

Gallery 16 Gallery 16 is a contemporary art gallery located in the SoMa district of San Francisco, California. It is owned by the San Francisco-based painter Griff Williams, and opened in 1993. Artists who have exhibited there include Graham Gillmore, Tu ...

art gallery. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide, including

San Diego Museum of Art The San Diego Museum of Art is a fine art museum in Balboa Park in San Diego, California, that houses a broad collection with particular strength in Spanish art. It opened as the Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego on February 28, 1926, and changed ...

Orange County Museum of Art The Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located on the campus of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. The museum's collection comprises more than 4,500 objects, with a concentration ...

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

Sacramento Sacramento ( or ; ; ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the seat of Sacramento County. Located at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers in Northern California's Sacramento Valley, Sacramento's 2020 p ...

New Langton Arts New Langton Arts (active 1975 – 2009) was a not-for-profit arts organization focusing on contemporary art founded in 1975 and located the South of Market neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Part of the first wave of alternative art spaces ...

, Andrea Schwartz Gallery and Stephen Wirtz Gallery, the

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast artists of the 20th and 21st cent ...

, and the Eli Ridgeway Gallery. His work has been reviewed in '' Art in America'', ''Frieze'', ''

Flash Art ''Flash Art'' is a contemporary art magazine, and an Italian and international publishing house. Originally published bilingually, both in Italian and in English, since 1978 is published in two separate editions, Flash Art Italia (Italian) and ...

, SFAQ,'' and Artnet.com.

Early life, family, and education

Griff Williams was born in

Butte, Montana Butte ( ) is a consolidated city-county and the county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana, United States. In 1977, the city and county governments consolidated to form the sole entity of Butte-Silver Bow. The city covers , and, according to the 2 ...

in 1966. His father, Pat Williams, was elected to the

Montana House of Representatives The Montana House of Representatives is, with the Montana Senate, one of the two houses of the Montana Legislature. Composed of 100 members, the House elects its leadership every two years. Composition of the House In the event that the parti ...

, and his mother, Carol Williams, served as the first female majority leader in the

Montana Senate The Montana State Senate is the upper house of the Montana Legislature, the state legislative branch of the U.S. state of Montana. The body is composed of 50 senators elected for four years. Half of the Senate is up for election every two years. ...

. His sister is philanthropist

Whitney Williams Whitney Williams (born 1970/1971) is an American businesswoman and former political candidate. She is CEO and Founder owilliamsworksanFull Glow Creative In October 2019, Williams announced her candidacy for the 2020 Montana gubernatorial election ...

. Williams earned his BFA from the University of Montana, Missoula in 1984; and his MFA from the

San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was a Private college, private art school, college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mis ...

in 1993.

Career

In 1993, Williams founded

and Urban Digital Color in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. The gallery has exhibited the works of many influential contemporary artists, including

Margaret Kilgallen Margaret Leisha Kilgallen (October 28, 1967 – June 26, 2001) was a San Francisco Bay Area artist who combined graffiti art, painting, and installation art. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was ...

bell hooks Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks (stylized in lowercase), was an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Be ...

Paul Sietsema Paul Sietsema (born 1968) is a Los Angeles–based American artist who works primarily in film, painting and drawing. His work addresses the production, consumption, and proliferation of cultural objects, reflecting his interest in the possibility o ...

Arturo Herrera Arturo Herrera is a Venezuelan-born (1959), Berlin-based visual artist known for wide-ranging work that is rooted in the practice of collage.Merjian, Ara H"Arturo Herrera's Latest Works Reinvigorate Modernist Collage Practices,"''Art in America' ...

Rex Ray Rex Ray (born Michael Patterson; September 11, 1956 – February 9, 2015) was an American graphic designer and collage artist, based in San Francisco. Early life and education Born as Michael Patterson on September 11, 1956, on a United States ...

Michelle Grabner Michelle Grabner (born 1962 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) is an artist, curator, and critic based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has curated sever ...

Mark Grotjahn Mark Grotjahn (born 1968) is an American painter best known for abstract work and bold geometric paintings. Grotjahn lives and works in Los Angeles. Early life and education Grotjahn was born in Pasadena, but grew up in the Bay Area.Arcy Douglas ...

, and

Ari Marcopoulos Ari Marcopoulos (born Aristos) is an American self-taught photographer, adventurer and film artist. Born in the Netherlands, he is best known for presenting work showcasing elusive subcultures, including artists, snowboarders and musicians. He liv ...

. Williams has been an instructor at the

California College of the Arts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...

, the San Francisco Art Institute, and

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, California is part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was relocated to Oakland in ...

. He has also designed and published dozens of books with the

Editions imprint. His recent books include ''The Gay Seventies: Hal Fischer','' the first monograph to feature the complete collection of works Hal Fischer produced in San Francisco's Haight and Castro neighborhoods in the 1970s. Published by

Chronicle Books Chronicle Books is a San Francisco–based American publishing company that publishes books for both adults and children. History The company was established in 1967 by Phelps Dewey, an executive with Chronicle Publishing Company, then-publish ...

in 2020, his book on the life and artwork of the late San Francisco artist

includes essays by

Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit (born 1961) is an American writer and activist. She has written on a variety of subjects, including feminism, the environment, politics, place, and art. Solnit is the author of seventeen books, including '' River of Shadows'', whi ...

and Christian Frock.

Filmmaking

Williams and his son, filmmaker Keelan Williams made a documentary feature film, ''Tell Them We Were Here'' (2021). The film is a

documentary A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and ...

about eight artists living and working in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a List of regions of California, region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, California, S ...

who are guided by a belief that creativity is a tool for societal change. The artwork of Amy Franchescini, Alicia McCarthy,

Sadie Barnette Sadie Barnette (born 1984), is an American artist who works primarily with drawing, photography, and large-scale installation. Her work explores Black life, personal histories, and the political through material explorations. She lives in Oaklan ...

, Lynn-Herhsman-Leeson,

Nigel Poor Nigel Poor is an artist and cofounder and co-host of the podcast Ear Hustle. She is co-author of the book '' This Is Ear Hustle: Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life''. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area. Early life and education Po ...

Jim Goldberg Jim Goldberg (born 1953) is an American artist and photographer, whose work reflects long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations. Goldberg has received three National Endowment of ...

, Michael Swaine, and

Tucker Nichols Tucker Nichols (born May 14, 1970) is an American artist. His artwork includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, books, in-gallery cinema and performance spaces, as well as large scale works on walls and storefront windows. He has a BA from Brown Uni ...

are featured in the film with music by Marc Cappelle,

Kelley Stoltz Kelley Stoltz (born September 21, 1971) is an American singer, songwriter and musician. He currently resides in San Francisco. His music has been compared to that of Brian Wilson, Velvet Underground, Nick Drake and Leonard Cohen. Musical caree ...

Tommy Guerrero Thomas Marc Guerrero (born September 9, 1966) is an American musician, composer, and professional skateboarder. He is a former member of the Bones Brigade, a prominent skateboarding team of the 1980s that also included Tony Hawk and Steve Caba ...

Vetiver ''Chrysopogon zizanioides'', commonly known as vetiver and khus, is a perennial bunchgrass of the family Poaceae. Vetiver is most closely related to sorghum while sharing many morphological characteristics with other fragrant grasses, such as ...

, and

Devendra Banhart Devendra Obi Banhart (born May 30, 1981) is an American singer-songwriter and visual artist. Banhart was born in Texas and raised in Venezuela and California. In 2000, he dropped out of the San Francisco Art Institute to pursue a musical career. ...

. The film was selected by film festivals around the world, including

DOXA Documentary Film Festival The DOXA Documentary Film Festival is a documentary film festival based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is held annually held for 10 days in May, and is presented by The Documentary Media Society, a non-profit organization. The festiv ...

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival Big Sky Documentary Film Festival is an annual non-fiction film festival held in Missoula, Montana each February. The event showcases documentary films from around the world. The festival first began in 2003 as a seven-day event. It is now a ten- ...

, and

Newport Beach Film Festival The Newport Beach Film Festival (NBFF) is an annual film festival in Newport Beach, California, typically held in late April. In 2022, it was announced that the festival had permanently changed its date to be held in October, as the festival bega ...

. ''Tell Them We Were Here'' was awarded Best Feature Documentary at the Nevada City Film Festival. The

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

gave the film its highest possible rating and stated, "the Williamses see art not as the exclusive domain of museums, galleries and collections, but as an essential component of a healthy society — something that can make communities not just more beautiful, but more functional."

Nominations

*SECA Award, from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2000 * Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, 2017

Collections

The following institutions have public holdings of Williams' work. *

Stanford Hospital Stanford University Medical Center is a teaching hospital which includes Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children's Health. It serves as a private hospital for the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 2022–23, it was ranked by the U ...

*Neiman Marcus Collection *Progressive Insurance *

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and film archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director ...

References

External links

griffwilliams.comGallery 16Tell Them We Were Here
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Griff 1966 births Living people People from Butte, Montana San Francisco Art Institute alumni University of Montana alumni Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area San Francisco Art Institute faculty Painters from California