May 12, 2003

Artist Roy De Forest (left), San Francisco Poet Laureate devorah major, writer and rock journalist Ben Fong-Torres and bebe boutique founder Manny Mashouf will be inducted into the SFSU Alumni Hall of Fame for 2003.

The group will be honored at a campus reception Friday, May 23. Each year the SFSU alumni association selects new inductees, whose pictures will hang on the Hall of Fame wall in the first floor of the J. Paul Leonard Library.

Now a professor emeritus at UC Davis, De Forest, who received a bachelor's degree in art in 1953 and master's degree in art in 1958, was a member of San Francisco's "Funk Art" movement of the 1960s. His paintings evolved into vividly patterned landscapes packed with animal and human figures. He's been in more than three dozen one-man exhibits, and his print "Country Dog Gentlemen," was part of a recent exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

major (right), a 1975 graduate with a bachelor's degree in black studies, is an essayist, novelist and poet. Her latest work, "With More Than Tongue," will be published this month. A San Francisco resident since childhood, major captured the essence of the Fillmore District in her 2002 novel "Brown Glass Windows."

Mashouf (left), who earned a bachelor's degree in political science in 1966, started his career as a manager for rock impresario Bill Graham. His stay in the music business was short as he moved to women's apparel. He opened the first bebe boutique on Polk Street in 1976. Now with 178 shops in the United States and Canada, bebe is a cutting-edge retailer and its apparel is featured on "The Practice" among other television shows. Mashouf also serves on the College of Business's Advisory Council.

The fourth Hall of Fame inductee, writer and broadcaster Ben Fong-Torres, is also being honored as Alumnus of the Year.