My Mother Married Wilbur Stump is a video family album compiled by Skip Sweeney, a founder of San Francisco’s Video Free America, an alternative media facility. The video documents a discussion between the artist, his mother, and sister about their step-father, Wilbur Stump.
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.