About Gary Westford
Gary Westford is the lender and co-curator of our 2021 Special Exhibit: Lights, Color Fashion: Psychedelic Posters and Patterns of 1960s San Francisco. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended San Francisco State College; it was during these years he started collecting psychedelic posters and fashion. He later attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied with Bay Area Figurative painters. Westford moved to Oregon in the late 1970s and began a long career as an arts educator committed to social justice and change. He worked for twenty-three years in juvenile and adult prison systems in California and Oregon, using art to promote growth and social change for inmates. In 1991, he was the recipient of a national teaching award in corrections education. He continues to create art and his pieces have been included in numerous major national juried exhibitions, and is currently represented by Dab Art Gallery in L.A.