Rock poster fans in the Bay Area will want to make note that Moon­al­ice is host­ing their annual 420 Tribal Pow-Wow this Sat­ur­day at Slim’s in San Fran­cisco. Moon­al­ice always makes their April 20 shows very spe­cial, and this year is no excep­tion. Every­one who attends will be treated to a free pack of posters (15 in all) by artists: Wendy Wright, Car­olyn Fer­ris, Dar­rin Bren­ner, John Mavroudis, David Singer, Den­nis Loren, Den­nis Larkins, Dave Hunter, Lau­ren Yurkovich, John Seabury, Stan­ley Mouse, Lee Con­klin, Ron Dono­van, Wes Wil­son, & Alexan­dra Fis­cher!

This year’s Moon­al­ice Tribal Pow-Wow also serves as a ben­e­fit for Sweet Relief where all pro­ceeds from the show will go to help Jim King get a surgery he des­per­ately needs. In addi­tion to ticket sales, priced at $4.20, a silent auc­tion is also being held with many cool items includ­ing rock posters! More infor­ma­tion on the items and event are at  Moonalice.com & MoonalicePosters.com.

Don’t Wait, Buy Tick­ets now — only $4.20

Directions:

Slim’s San Francisco, CA

Seditions

Winston Smith and Frank Kozik

February 2 — February 23, 2013

The seditious editions in the show are works of “rebellious disorder” that act as an intellectual call to arms to the public at large to stand against complacency. Each artist repurposes the pop cultural zeitgeist of the 50’s postwar era with punk rock bones to create sometimes complex sometimes bone chillingly simple messages challenging us to look harder at the politics and governments we take for granted are working in our best interests. On exhibit will be original works and limited editions.

Kozik and Smith share the experience of having lived in postwar Europe in the early to mid 70’s, a period of intense upheaval. Kozik’s childhood in Franco Era Spain was full of visually influential authoritarian acts and imagery, evidenced by his use of the propaganda poster format. By contrast Winston Smith’s time in Italy as a teenager was full of class struggle and socio-political turmoil turned to violence that one writer claims “amounted to anarchy.” This state of chaos mixed with a 50’s childhood in a “flyover” state comes into stark relief in his politically tinged collage-montages.

Using imagery of the 50’s and beyond as his starting point, Smith “kidnaps” them from their original contexts, re-purposing them into politically charged tableaus that confront the viewer with the paradoxes and incongruities occurring in front of our eyes. With a sublime humor, Smith talks to us of deep and troubling issues with friendly imagery. Kozik uses the template of the propaganda poster prevalent during and post WWII in the US and Europe to create art print and music poster editions full of visually gripping and supremely graphic scenarios rife with cultural messages of challenge. He has recently turned his graphically keen eye to the world of sculpture, creating limited edition works of some of his most well known images.

About Winston Smith

Smith first became known (and later beloved) for his collaborations with punk legends Dead Kennedys and his numerous album covers, inserts and flyers for the band in their formative years. His technique of cutting out by hand and gluing each individual element has inspired a generation of artists. He is classically trained in Renaissance art, having left the U.S. in 1969 to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he lived for several years before moving to Rome. Over the last 35 years, Winston has had numerous one-man shows in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, London, Berlin, Antwerp, Rome and Tokyo, as well as group shows through out the United States and Europe. He lives and works in San Francisco.

About Frank Kozik

Frank Kozik is an entirely self-taught artist whose artistic career rose largely out of his enthusiasm for Austin’s growing undeground punk rock scene in the early 80’s. He transitioned to silkscreening large colorful concert posters, creating artwork for a diverse array of musicians such as Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Beastie Boys, Green Day, Neil Young and Nirvana. He moved to San Francisco in the 1990’s where he started his own music label. In 2001 he transitioned full time to creating fine art, design and art toys. He currently lives and works in San Francisco with his wife, Sharon, and their four cats.

Exhibition preview available at VarnishFineArt.com

Opening Reception

Saturday, February 2nd, 6-9pm

Gigantic Brewing Company’s The Time Traveler Porter will be available at the opening reception, label designed by Winston Smith!

Directions

16 Jessie Street, #C120 — San Francisco, CA
(415) 433‑4400

When I was in New York City last month for The Art of Moonalice at Brooklyn Bowl, I made it a point to stop by the Jonathan LeVine Gallery to see the Jeremy Geddes Exhale exhibit. I’m very thankful that I did too, the pieces I saw blew my mind. I tried to acquire a print of the painting Acedia (pictured above) but wasn’t fast enough as demand for works by Jeremy is very high. You can see more of his work at jeremygeddesart.com ☮

JOHN SEABURY

THE DEVIL HAS WORK FOR IDLE HANDS

November 17 – January 5, 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 17, 6-8pm

Steven Wolf Fine Arts will host The Devil has Work for Idle Hands, the first-ever exhibition of John Seabury’s drawings. The Berkeley artist first came to prominence in the music underground of the 1970s with a series of flyers advertising his band the Psycotic Pineapple. He has since gone on to acclaim as a designer of posters for rock clubs and rock bands and he continues to perform on stage as well.

In Seabury’s drawings, soulful, freakish-looking males dwell in skewed landscapes alongside gorgeous and disturbing females. Faces and bodies are pushed to extreme limits, and landscapes are infused with dime-store paranoia. Seabury has a beautiful, obsessive line born from the horror vacuii of psychedelic posters and the grotesque cartooning of underground comics. There is a surrealist dissonance and a wise-cracking punch line in everything he does as though Salvador Dali had loaned his pen to Curly from the Three Stooges. It’s outrageous dexterity combined with arrested adolescence.

During his 35-year career, Seabury has experimented with sculpture and printing: his etchings are remarkable for the way they classicize weirdness, and his monoprints make clever use of the castoffs from his commercial music projects. His ceramic portraits are as outlandish and highly resolved as his drawings. But it is the flyers from Psychotic Pineapple that stand out for their aggressively obnoxious character, historical timeliness and sustained narrative.

Psycotic Pineapple was created in 1974 by two members of the Berkeley power pop band Rubinoos as an outlet for the wise-ass energy that they couldn’t secrete into their mainstream music. When Rubinoos took off, leaving no time for the irreverent side project, Pineapple was deeded to four musician friends of the band, including John Seabury. With stripped-down pre-punk prankster-pop charmers like I Wanna Get Rid of You, and She’s Boss, the band attacked any pretense that remained from the days of utopian, hippie rock and roll. Their loud, scary, chaotic shows, which included a nut job dressed as a pineapple, baited the audience in a way that would soon become common in punk rock, and almost always insured that they would not be invited back.

The flyers chronicle the Pineapple’s transgressive antics like a comic strip disseminated intermittently on the street. The Pineapple, as his first name implies, has no boundaries, no sense of right and wrong, and no limits. He is the ego-maniacal rock star in a fun house mirror, a dark celebration of the libido at all costs, a logo run amok in a world of consumer pleasures. After seeing a flyer and a show the only question left for the audience was, what would the pineapple do next?

The exhibition coincides with two other Psycotic Pineapple events: a reunion show December 9th at the Bottom of the Hill; and the re-release on CD of the Pineapple’s sole album, Where’s the Party? in a 48 page, hardbound, full color, art book package designed Hugh Brown. The book contains hilarious photos, Seabury graphics, personal reminiscences by the band and an essay by fellow traveler Roger Clark, of Little Roger and the Goosebumps.

Steven Wolf Fine Arts 2747 19th Street, A San Francisco

The Art of Moonalice

An exhibit of Rock Posters created for the band Moonalice.

Moonalice is a band that commissions a poster for every gig and gives them away for free.  Since the band’s formation in 2007, Moonalice has produced a unique series of almost 550 original gig posters with artwork from over 20 artists.

Moonalice posters feature artwork from many of the legendary poster artists of the psychedelic 60’s as well as today’s top rock poster artists.  Moonalice is a band that lets poster artists do what they do best — make art! Unencumbered by standard constraints, Moonalice posters are as diverse as the artists who create them.

On Sunday, October 28, 2012,  Moonalice proudly presents their 2nd poster show at the Brooklyn Bowl. The full series of Moonalice posters will be on display and available for purchase at this FREE East Coast event. Many Moonalice poster artists will be attending the event in-person. The poster show opens at noon, Moonalice’s concert will follow the poster show in the evening. Join the event on Facebook!

SUNDAY — October 28, 2012

Doors open at Noon!

Artists in attendance:
Wes Wilson • Alexandra Fischer
David Singer • Stanley Mouse
Chris Shaw • John Mavroudis
Dennis Larkins • Dave Hunter
Dennis Loren • John Seabury
Chuck Sperry • Wendy Wright
Carolyn Ferris • Gary Houston
Darrin Brenner • Winston Smith
Lee Conklin • Lauren Yurkovich
George and Patricia Sargent

Also featuring artwork by:
Ron Donovan • Claude Shade • Grace Slick

more info at MoonalicePosters.com & Moonalice.com

Brooklyn Bowl 61 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn, NY