Described by the New York Times as “an extraordinarily personal essay that struggles to explain and understand what went wrong in the director’s relationship with his father, Ray, a car dealer,” My Father Sold Studebakers is an auto-biographical work in which the artist reveals a wealth of familial relationships and problems. The tape is comprised of old home movies, family photographs, and candid interviews with the Sweeney family.
Born in 1946, Skip Sweeney studied theater arts at Santa Clara University before becoming involved in the Bay Area video scene in the late 60s. In 1968, Sweeney was one of the founders of Electric Eye, an early media collective concerned with video performances and experiments. In 1970, Sweeney founded Video Free America, a San Francisco media arts center and communications nexus, with Arthur Ginsberg. Sweeney's work in video included abstract image-processing and synthesis, autobiographical documentaries and portraits, and video installations for theater including a version of Allen Ginsberg's Kaddish (1977). Tuning and tinkering for hours to produce shimmering, interweaving video mandalas, Sweeney was one of a handful of people who mastered video feedback. Sweeney later worked in collaboration with Joanna Kelly, producing video dance tapes, video art, and documentaries.