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joseph squier
2. Art School and the Poetics of Process
Arriving at the San Francisco Art Institute felt less like a continuation of school and more like an escape into possibility. The rules I had learned to follow — about success, discipline, order — suddenly felt irrelevant. Here, the important questions weren’t about answers, they were about attention. Intuition. Form. Risk.
At SFAI I began to understand that art was not a product but a tool for exploration. What mattered was vision, how you looked — how you constructed meaning through rhythm, gesture, juxtaposition, composition, image. I began to understand the difference between looking and seeing. I no longer had to justify why I paid attention to things others overlooked. Paying attention was the work.
Two mentors were crucial to this shift.
Larry Sultan taught me how to recognize the personal as a site of cultural inquiry. He understood photography not just as a way of seeing, but as a way of thinking — an intersection of memory, ambiguity, and visual metaphor. His work blurred the line between documentary and invention, and in his classroom, I began to see that the stories we invent to create meaning are shaped as much by omission as by fact.
Reagan Louie revealed the depth and discipline of process. With him I learned to trust what unfolds in repetition, failure, quiet. His way of working — slow, attentive, open — helped me realize that making is not about control, but about calibration. You refine by listening. You discover by returning.
Both men also gave me something I hadn't expected: models of masculinity that felt new and needed. They were strong authoritative teachers, but never domineering. They were quiet, soft-spoken, and deeply present. Larry modeled a strength that made room for tenderness — a masculinity anchored in generosity and emotional intelligence. Reagan made room for the unknown, teaching me that to embrace it fearlessly requires courage and wisdom.
After a childhood shaped by volatility and intimidation, these examples stayed with me. What I learned from each of them didn’t arrive all at once, it unfolded over years. I feel as though I’m still learning from them. Their influence continues to echo in my work and my way of being in the world.
At SFAI I found permission to explore and a vocabulary to express what I was discovering. I was no longer orbiting creativity from the outside, I was immersed in it. My days were filled with making, looking, discussing, revising. There was no single formula, no hierarchy of materials or media. There was only the question: What does the work need?
That question — what does the work need? — has guided me ever since. It taught me to work across disciplines, to let the concept dictate the medium, and to embrace complexity over clarity. It also gave me something deeper: a way to translate personal experience into public form without reducing its ambiguity. To honor emotion without flattening it into explanation. To find shape not in resolution, but in rhythm, contrast, and attention.