{{Short description|American poet and artist (1923–2009)}} '''Knute Stiles''' (1923-December 1, 2009) was a union organizer, painter, collagist, art critic, poet and entrepreneur. He was born in Minnesota, the son of the state's first female physician. He went to the St. Paul Art School,<ref name=obit /> and after World War II, attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/arts/artsspecial/in-the-spirit-of-black-mountain-college-an-avant-garde-incubator.html|title=In the Spirit of Black Mountain College, an Avant-Garde Incubator|last=Kino|first=Carol|date=16 March 2015|work=The New York Times|access-date=August 7, 2018 |language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref>

==Career== Stiles served in Alaska in the U.S. Army during the Second World War. He returned there annually, spending summers fishing in Alaska through 1956 working salmon boats and organizing cannery workers. From 1946 to 1948, he attended Black Mountain College, near Ashville, N.C.<ref>{{cite book |last= |first= |title=Black Mountain College: Sprouted Seeds : an Anthology of Personal Accounts|year= 1990|location= |publisher= |pages=222, 342 |isbn=0870496638 |oclc= 21441294|editor=Mervin Lane}}</ref> With assistance from the G.I. Bill of Rights, he graduated from the California School of Fine Arts in 1953. From the autumn of 1953 to 1960, he co-owned and co-managed, with fellow former Black Mountain student, artist Leo Krikorian, ''The Place'', an artists' and writers' bar and gallery in North Beach.<ref>[http://www.blackmountaincollegeproject.org/Biographies/KrikorianLeo/KrikorianLeoBIO.htm Black Mountain Project Leo Krikorian], Retrieved August 8, 2018.</ref> The bar featured poetry readings and jazz, and hosted the debut showing of artist Jay DeFeo's work. It was known for its open mike, "Blabbermouth Nights." It was frequented in those years by members of the Beat Generation including Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Brautigan, Allen Ginsberg and, from the San Francisco Renaissance, Jack Spicer.<ref>[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/The-life-and-times-of-North-Beach-s-renowned-11010424.php The life and times of North Beach’s renowned Beat dive, the Place], ''San Francisco Chronicle'', Gary Kamiya, March 17, 2017. Retrieved August 7, 2018.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last= |first= |date= |title=Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance |url= |location= |publisher= |pages=55–56, 80 |isbn= |author-link=Lewis Ellingham, Kevin Killian }}</ref>

Knute taught drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute and wrote art criticism for many years in Art Forum and Art in America. He was a dedicated avant-gardist, showing at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and various galleries in San Francisco and New York, and owned a gallery and frame shop in the latter.<ref name=obit />

He was a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the 1960s in San Francisco, California.

He cofounded, and shepherded for decades, an intentional community in San Francisco called East-West House. Other co-founders were from the American Academy of Asian Studies, moving on because Alan Watts was leaving that school. A few years later while Joanne Kyger was living there she began training in Zen meditation with Shunryū Suzuki. Suzuki later founded the San Francisco Zen Center, where more East-West House residents trained in Zen. In addition to Asian Studies scholars and seekers like Ananda Claude Dalenberg, Gia-Fu Feng, and Dick Price, many artists and writers resided there over the years, including Kyger and her future husband Gary Snyder, Albert Saijo, Lew Welch, Tom Field,<ref>[https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=BAR19951207.1.23 Obituaries: Tom Field], ''Bay Area Reporter'', December 7, 1995. Retrieved August 21, 2018.</ref> Lenore Kandel and Phillip Whalen. Jack Kerouac was briefly a guest, and many residents became characters, under pseudonyms, in his novels ''On the Road'' and ''Big Sur''. Kerouac's biographer, Gerald Nicosia, wrote that East-West House "was no placid colony of self-contained workers," but instead, "a madhouse of Zen lunatics." East-West House was first located at 2273 California Street near Japantown, then Geary Street in "the Avenues" and finally its members purchased a Victorian home at 733 Baker Street, in the Haight-Ashbury district.<ref>{{cite book |last= |first= |date=2003 |title=The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour |url= https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/20079724|location=San Francisco |publisher=City Lights Books |page=IX, 151–152 |isbn=0872864170 |author-link=Bill Morgan }}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Wilson |first=Carol Ann |title=Still Point of the Turning World: The Life of Gia-fu Feng |date=2009 |publisher=Amber Lotus Publishing |pages=126–127 |isbn=978-1-60237-296-2 |language=en}}</ref>

Stiles lived for several years in San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico. He spent his last twenty active years in Bisbee, Arizona writing poetry and painting, before moving to an assisted living residence in Tucson, Arizona. He died in Tucson on December 1, 2009.<ref name=obit>[https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=knute-stiles&pid=137229715 Knute Stiles Obituary], ''San Francisco Chronicle'', December 13, 2009. Retrieved August 7, 2018.</ref>

==References== {{Reflist|30em}}

== External links == * [https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/knute-stiles-papers-8670 Knute Stiles papers 1947-1971], at Archive of American Art, Smithsonian Institution * [http://www.oac.cdlib.org/search?style=oac4;titlesAZ=k;idT=UCb111711319 Knute Stiles papers 1948-2005], at Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stiles, Knute}} Category:1923 births Category:2009 deaths Category:Beat Generation people Category:American LGBTQ painters Category:American collage artists Category:Artists from California Category:Artists from Minnesota Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni Category:Artists from San Francisco Category:United States Army personnel of World War II Category:20th-century American LGBTQ people