By Walt Williams
It’s story time at Creekside High School. No, we are not Peter Hansen’s SVHS film program producing and inspiring over 20 years of filmmakers (The final student show comes to the Sebastiani Theatre April 3). And no, there was not a a crowd of inspired students installing the SONOMAWOOD sign a week ago on the Plaza. Only a few Creekside alumni who currently work for Rob Wilson construction who were recruited by my son, who also works for Rob, but you don’t care about that, let’s get to the story.
The history of the sign is the history of Sonoma is the history of Creekside is the history of the Sonoma International Film Festival. Don’t know it? No worries, it’s pretty simple. Way back in 2009, SONOMAWOOD began as a simple rip off of the HOLLYWOOD sign, then turned into a curriculum about construction and city politics and movies. Ken Brown was mayor, Kevin McNeely was in charge of the film festival and Bruce Willis came to town.
Creekside students made the sign, had no place to put it (I wanted it to go in the hills behind the plaza) until Kathy Swett allowed it to go in front of the Sonoma Community Center. Awesome, except that people had to stand in the middle of East Napa Street to take pictures (no cell phone cameras back then).
The next year it moved to the horseshoe in the Plaza where it magically appeared for the next 15 years, each Spring, announcing the film festival. It has been called many things: iconic, a gorilla art piece, blight, a homey knock-off, a SIFF beacon, and my favorite, “that darn sign.”
Then in 2022, the S and the D in the sign were painted yellow and blue in solidarity with the invasion of Ukrain, and the next year the WOOD was gone. New vision, new philosophy from the director, whatever, Creekside kept making the shortened version but it never quite felt right without the WOOD.
Luckily, last year I had no student labor for the installation so I roped director Carl Spence into helping and was able to explain the original vision of the sign, thus the return of the WOOD (the SIFF board also apparently wanted it back).
So, that’s the good news. The bad news is that, since 2009, students and education have changed and not really for the better. Students are less willing to do things like design and cut and paint and install giant 10-foot letters; many administrators see less value in projects that connect students to the community because there is no data to track, and what standard does calculating the angles of support using the Pythagorean Theorem satisfy? (CSS 8.G.7).
Most importantly though, it’s hard. Frankly, that spry, creative, energetic, full-of-ideas-and-optimism, art teacher of 2009 (me) is now a cynical, burned-out shell of a man counting his days to retirement (not really but maybe a little). And how can one think about giant art installations when our world is on fire?
But we’re not here to talk about the bad news. The festival was about to start, the ‘D’ needed paint, and if you haven’t learned to use the serenity prayer to deflect the world’s problems then you’re probably hiding under your covers until 2028.
But we put that all away for the week because the film festival was awesome. It evolves, it grows, it shrinks, people come and go, but it is one of the many reasons our little town is as magical as it is. I want my students to feel that and know that they are connected to this community, one that celebrates art and the creative process.
See you at the movies next year.
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