Biography

Bay Area artist Jack Fulton finds inspiration in all of the places and people he has encountered during his life, but he is best known for his hand-annotated photographs of the American West that include line upon line of written observations. Art historian Wanda Corn has characterized Fulton as an “heir to funk,” observing, “his look is messy and his art more literate, but the humor, energy, and irreverence … are still there.”1 Whether trekking through the Sierra Nevada, visiting the remote regions of Africa, or exploring the vast desert landscapes of the western states, Fulton remains committed to producing artwork that is as much about the places he visits, as about himself.

Fulton was born in San Francisco in 1939, to Scottish immigrants whose influence helped to shape his artistic output. His mother was an award-winning elocutionist in Scotland and often recited the irreverent poetry of Robert Burns, while his father worked as a logger, milkman, and engineer. These influences led to Fulton’s technical interest in photography and his love of language and words—he is known to be a faithful reader of the Oxford English Dictionary. Over the years, Fulton has traveled extensively throughout the North American West, and has explored tens of thousands of miles of roadway from Alaska to Mexico. These travels have given him a deep appreciation for Native American pictographs and petroglyphs—a visual language that has aided his own search for the “narrative of natural expression.”2 In 1968, Fulton began teaching photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, and he has led groups of students on extended photography trips to Nevada and Utah each year. While he is on the road, he ponders anything and everything that he encounters, and when he returns home to San Rafael, he combines his travel photographs with witty verbal musings to create artworks that are more akin to personal scrapbooks than polished fine art objects.

A recurring theme in Fulton’s work is the abandonment he frequently encounters in the desert. Certainly, anyone who has traveled by car through the American West has glimpsed the empty houses and structures that leave one wondering about the lives of their former inhabitants. In ‘No Time’—Antelope—maybe Little Fish Lake Valley, an abandoned home appears with its screen door wide open, framed by threatening barbed wire. The format of the piece is typical for Fulton, who often overlays his photographs with drawings and his trademark script. In this case, Fulton’s handwritten commentary conveys his clever ruminations on the empty home: “NO TIME. Not too long ago—could’ve been a drought. Might’ve been poor crops or family troubles like it’s plain too lonely. A death perhaps or just getting old. But, it’s sittin on a branch to Hot Creek so I’d speculate twas bad weather. Yup, must’ve been bad weather.”

According to Corn, “Fulton’s play with language, particularly time-worn clichés and earthy colloquialisms … is a trademark [he] shares with other Northern California artists of his generation. Along with his friends William Wiley and Bruce Nauman, [Fulton] presents himself as a kind of downhome humorist.”3 For example, Fulton has also suggested that the premature departure of the homeowners in No Time may have been the result of Nevada’s annual infestation of shieldbacked katydids, commonly known as Mormon crickets, that devour crops and gardens across the state each year.4

Fulton thrives on such bizarre stories, which complement his casual, laid-back, idiosyncratic approach to making art. Viewing Fulton’s works is like peering into a personal diary filled with intimate ruminations and humble poetic sentiments. “Like Emily Dickinson,” Fulton once said, “I keep a visual record of my thoughts and experiences. A human being has a variety of visual and complex emotions and I’m attempting to record these relationships.”5 —A.W.

1. Wanda Corn, 2 Saunters: Summer & Winter: Photography and Words by Jack Fulton (San Rafael, Calif.: Pencil Press, 1986), 2.
2. Jack Fulton, conversation with the author, 24 February 2004.
3. Corn, 2.
4. Fulton, conversation.
5. Artist’s statement, 2004.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)


Born in San Francisco in 1937, Fulton was educated at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California and the University of California Extension in San Francisco. He has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute since 1968 and has lectured at the University of California, Santa Cruz since 1978. Fulton received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1980 and 1990. In 1994 he was awarded the Philadelphia College of Art lectureship. Fulton’s work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Art Institute, the Oakland Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. His photo-based works are included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum of California, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago. SJMA currently owns six photographs by Fulton. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2003)

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