User:Apurva Mahanot3520/sandbox

Introduction
Richard Dean Kamler ( 2 November 1935 – 1 November 2017) was a contemporary artist, activist, mainly working around San Francisco, California. His installations, audio pieces, drawings, and public presentations have dealt with a range of social, cultural, political and environmental considerations and have been exhibited nationally and internationally. His work mostly consisted of installation art and interventions, usually pertaining to the treatment of prison inmates and topics of incarceration and capital punishment. The racism, violence and wasted human potential in the US prisons became his signature subject. His art has been on exhibition throughout the world; from Alcatraz Island to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, from the East Jerusalem Cultural Centre to San Francisco Bay, from the Bischoff Gallery in Cologne, Germany to the grounds of the San Francisco County Jail and the Art Space in New York.

Early Life
Kamler grew up in the Sunset District and attended Lawton Elementary School on 31st Avenue, near his home. He graduated from Lowell High School. He received a B.A. in 1963 and an M.A. in 1974 from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation, he served an apprenticeship with Frederick Kiesler, the visionary painter, and sculptor.

Career
Kamler had completed his first teaching stint in Bozeman, Montana, Kamler taught art at the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of Arts and Crafts as well as the University of San Francisco, where he was a tenured professor. He was the founding chair of the USF art department and served from 2006-2009, with his emphasis on a curriculum titled ‘The Artist as a Citizen’. Kamler was the host of a radio show on KUSF, an online-only radio station owned by the University of San Francisco, called ArtTalk from 2007-2009. The show harbored conversations with a range of artists, activists, educators, curators, and critics.

Personal Life
He was married to famous dancer and actress Joya Cory. In 2004, Kamler was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, an event that temporarily suspended his art-making activities. He had his thyroid gland removed before enduring a series of radiation treatments. In 1966-67 Kamler spent a year and a half in the village of San Blas in Nayarit, Mexico.

Awards
Kamler has received various awards and grants for his work; A National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Visual Arts Fellowship, an Alaskan State Arts Council/NEA grant where he spent 9 months in Petersburg on Baranof Island in Alaska. He has also received many California Arts Council Artist in Residence awards, Gunk Foundation for Public Art grants, Institute of Noetic Science grants, and Potrero Nuevo Fund. In 1990 he received another grant from the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation. In 1996 he was awarded the Adaline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1997, he was given the California Arts Council Fellowship and in 1999 a Major artist fellowship from George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Death
Kamler died on Nov. 1 in the San Francisco home he grew up in. The cause of death was thyroid cancer, which he battled for 12 years. Kamler was 81.

Work

 * Oh, Give me a home where buffalo roam: An art installation containing one hundred life-sized plywood bison kept across the grounds of the San Francisco County Jail in San Bruno. There were two audio tapes with the installation. One was a continuous 3-minute loop coming from the speakers in the herd. The area was filled with the ambient sounds of jail, that is, keys jangling, alarms ringing, metal doors slamming and the sound of a bison stampede, accompanied with the sound of a harmonica playing ‘Oh, Give me a home where buffalo roam’. Visitors would stand 150-200 feet away from the herd. The second tape was much more intimate. One could listen to interviews of inmates, jail administrators with background sounds of the jail on a Walkman that they could take from the main gate.
 * Table of Voices: In 1981, Kamler began a three-year stint as an artist in residence at San Quentin State Prison. During this time he taped interviews with both inmates and their families, as well as with the families of victims of violent crimes. This became the audio portion of his best-known piece. He set up a replica of a prison visiting room, with phones on either side of a divider. Visitors on one side of the partition could pick up the phones and hear the real stories of the victims, as told by family members. On the other side, they could hear the stories of the convicted, often expressing remorse. “Table of Voices” was installed at Alcatraz and later traveled to the United States. It's a re-creation of a prison visiting room with telephones on either side of a table that's bisected by a sheet of clear plastic.
 * Make bread not bombs: Kamler and the Peace Navy set a 75-foot-tall, 20-foot-long inflatable plastic French bread afloat on the bay during Fleet Week to call attention to the nuclear testing France was doing in the South Pacific. Before the Coast Guard intervened, Greenpeace towed the giant loaf - a tricolor Parisian-brand wrapper bearing the message "Make Bread Not War" - around the bay and in front of the admirals and dignitaries on the deck of the Dartmouth.
 * The sound of Lions roaring: On April 20, 1992, Kamler led a protest at San Quentin State Prison on the night that executions were to be resumed after the reinstatement of the death penalty. Before the protests, Kamler went to the San Francisco Zoo and recorded lions roaring. Kamler then organized a small fleet to anchor as close to the shore outside the prison as he could get. Around midnight, when the execution was scheduled to happen he played the audio recording loud enough to be heard within the prison. The audio continued until the Coast Guard came to arrest him on charges of noise pollution.
 * Seeing Peace Billboards Project: (May 26, 2008 – June 22, 2008) A collaboration of 10 visual artists with the United Nations under the guidance of Richard Kamler, focusing on Peace. The 10 artists belonged to different member countries of the United Nations and presented their work on full-size outdoor advertising billboards around San Francisco. The artists were: Clinton Fein (South Africa), Kyi Win (Burma), Igor Gustevev (Ukraine), Betty Nobue Kano (Japan), Rafael Tesseles (Puerto Rico), Tonel (Cuba), Uzi Broshi (Israel), Taraneh Hemami (Iran), Victor Cartagena (El Salvador) and Richard Kamler (USA). The billboards were located at the following locations around San Francisco: Divisadero & O'Farrell, Cesar Chavez & Evans, Mission & 17th, Mission & 6th, 22nd & Irving, Masonic & Fulton, Valencia & Duboce, Broadway & Montgomery, 3rd & 19th, Judah & 9th.
 * Maximum Security Series: (1981 -1985) A series containing 5 parts, showcased at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art. In one, viewers looked through barbed wire at two life-size prison cells separated by a wall. A real, maggot-infested lamb carcass, wrapped in plastic, sat rotting in the corner of each cell. The cells depicted, were real-life replicas, based upon precise dimensions of cells in the San Quentin State Prison. All the walls in the gallery were painted black, with the title Maximum security written on each of them.
 * Retrospective: (January 27 – March 4, 2012) An amalgamation of the 4 decades of work that Richard Kamler carried out throughout his life. Showcased at the Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco where Kamler was a Professor Emeritus.
 * The waiting room: (1991 – 2000)An art installation simulating the environment the prisoners had to face in the final moments of their lives. Carts and trays made of lead were filled with the last meals of men receiving the punishment. Dishes like T-bone steaks, baked potatoes, burritos, onion rings were on display. A massive blue colored pendulum swung back and forth in the installation, with the ticking sounds of a clock, all in a video. Human heartbeats intervene every few minutes, then suddenly stutter and stop. The original piece included interviews with the mothers of murdered children, talking about capital punishment.
 * Out of Holocaust: (1976) Kamler’s first professional Installation. A replica of a barrack at Auschwitz was recreated, filled with wood, barbed wires, metal bowls, animal bones and cracked mirrors on the back wall. This installation was created for the Judah L Magnes Museum in Berkeley.
 * Last Meals: Sculptures created for the installation of ‘The Waiting Room’. The last meals requested by convicts on Texas’ death row were depicted. These meals were made of lead, each meal accompanied by the perpetrator's name and date of execution engraved in the metal.
 * Other works: Moving Pyramid Project, White shoes walking, Endgame, Desert Project, The Last Supper, Decadent, Unamerican, Morally Offensive, Barbed Wire, El Greco