Hangar 18

Book Party for Malaquias Mon­toya
Fri­day, Decem­ber 9, 2011, 6pm
East­Side Cul­tural Cen­ter, 2277 Inter­na­tional Blvd, Oakland

Cul­tural scholar and activist Terezita Romo has authored the first extended mono­graph of the life and work of Malaquias Mon­toya, the rev­o­lu­tion­ary print­maker and painter who was one of the great influ­ences of the Chi­cano Arts Move­ment of the 60’s and 70’s. In 2000, Malaquias spent a semes­ter as Vis­it­ing Pro­fes­sor in the Art Depart­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Notre Dame, in Indi­ana, and he cur­rently holds the title of Vis­it­ing Fel­low in the Insti­tute for Latino Stud­ies at Notre Dame.

Come meet the artist and author at our pub­lic recep­tion and book party where we will host a dia­logue between Mon­toya and Romo. The artist will also have prints on dis­play and for sale, as well as the book.

includ­ing The Firehouse-Goldenvoice Poster Series

An auburn-haired songstress holds a fawn. Shock­ing magenta hair falls to the shoul­ders of a blue nude strapped with artillery. A 1950s-model cop car rests peace­fully at the bot­tom of the sea, washed in blues and pur­ples reveal­ing a silent white angel. Each out­stand­ing print on dis­play rep­re­sents a promi­nent rock band. Each was cre­ated by Chuck Sperry.

In early 2011, Chuck Sperry, San Fran­cisco artist and co-owner of Fire­house Kus­tom Rockart Com­pany, made an unprece­dented dona­tion to the Library’s Art, Music and Recre­ation Depart­ment of over one hun­dred lim­ited edi­tion, hand-printed rock art posters. Offi­cially enti­tled, The Chuck Sperry Archive, this col­lec­tion com­pre­hen­sively doc­u­ments the Gold­en­voice Music Series (at the Regency and Warfield The­aters) from 2008 to present, as well as selected Fire­house pro­duc­tiv­ity related to the cultural-life of San Francisco.

This col­lec­tion is excit­ing in both use of color and vari­ety of con­tent. Each silkscreen print is com­prised of up to six­teen col­ors, applied as indi­vid­ual lay­ers. The pieces ref­er­ence styles rang­ing from Japan­ese nishiki-e, Aus­trian Expres­sion­ism, 1960s psy­che­delia, to the provoca­tive punk poster tra­di­tion of Sperry’s youth.  Musi­cians such as Neko Case, Danzig, Bad Reli­gion, Nick Cave, Soundgar­den and The Black Keys are rep­re­sented, as are a tal­ented group of Bay Area graphic artists (Ron Dono­van, Alex Fis­cher, Gregg Gor­don, John Howard, Dave Hunter, Alan Hynes, Scott John­son, Den­nis Loren, Chris Shaw, Frank Zio, & Zoltron) who con­tributed to the Fire­house Gold­en­voice Poster series under the art direc­tion of Chuck Sperry.

High Vol­ume Open­ing Recep­tion

Thurs­day, Octo­ber 20th from 6–7 pm
Latino/Hispanic Room A & B

High Vol­ume will be on dis­play at the San Fran­cisco Pub­lic Library
Octo­ber 7^th, 2011 – Jan­u­ary 6^th, 2012 on the 4th floor.

Chuck Sperry installed 11 foot by 9 foot acrylic paint­ing, “Saint Every­one,” at the SFMOMA’s Artists Gallery Win­dows on Minna Street. The paint­ing will be on view from June 2011 through Jan­u­ary 2012. There are flo­res­cent lights which are timed to go on at dusk until 2 am.

What Chuck says about his painting:

My large scale paint­ing, “Saint Every­one” is fig­u­ra­tive, a post­mod­ern pas­tiche of Pop, Op and Rock Art. Its theme is inspired from the very recent spon­ta­neous pop­u­lar move­ments which have swept the world since Jan­u­ary 2011. My iconic fig­ure holds a lotus, it’s unfold­ing petals sug­gest the expan­sion of the soul. The growth of its pure beauty springs from the fer­tile mud of its ori­gin and grows into a benign spir­i­tual promise. The fig­ure is a loose appro­pri­a­tion and is re-imagined by the artist from a rock poster cre­ated by The Big Five (Mouse, Wil­son, Grif­fin, Kel­ley, and Moscoso) for the 20th anniver­sary of the Sum­mer of Love in 1987. The Sum­mer of Love in 1967 is the San Fran­cisco ana­log of the change that is sweep­ing the world in 2011. This image was orig­i­nally used on a poster I designed and printed for “Amer­i­can Arti­fact, The Rise of Amer­i­can Rock Art,” directed by Merle Becker. Appliqué disks employ ele­ments of Op Art, inspired as they are from the work of Mar­tin Sharpe, the British psy­che­delic artist. They are pro­duced via silkscreen and applied – like a poster would on the street – in rhyth­mic pat­t­erniza­tion. The disks sug­gest decen­tral­iza­tion or cell struc­ture. I wanted to com­bine acrylic paint­ing and silkscreen tech­niques in a seam­less com­po­si­tion, and “Saint Every­one” is the result.

This paint­ing was a year in plan­ning and six weeks in exe­cu­tion. Renée de Cos­sio curated the project which involves me, Chris Shaw and Ron Dono­van. Renee has been a con­stant source of sup­port and inspi­ra­tion and I thank her and the San Fran­cisco Museum of Mod­ern Art for mak­ing this show happen.

Make sure to check the web­sites of my col­lab­o­rat­ing artist friends Chris Shaw andRon Dono­van to see their paint­ings and art work.

Here is a video taken show­ing the process of the paint­ing:

via SFMOMA Artists Gallery: “St. Every­one” Chuck Sperry Paint­ing at the SFMOMA Artists Gallery Win­dows.