Hangar 18

Chuck Sperry designed & printed a killer gig poster for The Black Keys per­for­mance at Out­side Lands in San Fran­cisco, CA on August 13, 2011. This 6 color silkscreen poster also won the Art of the Week award at ExpressoBeans.com. More infor­ma­tion at chucksperry.net

Keeper of the Gate by Ron Donovan

Keeper of the Gate by Ron Dono­van, 2011
Mixed Media on panel
144 x 108 inches
$8000

Keeper of the Gate by Ron Dono­van, a site spe­cific instal­la­tion for the SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery, can now be seen day or night at the gallery’s pub­lic arts venue: the SFMOMA Garage Win­dows at 147 Minna Street and 150 Natoma Street.

Set against a reced­ing black back­ground, the mon­u­men­tal piece is con­structed with 8 lay­ers of hand-painted wood pan­el­ing, and prints on wood panel, and stands over 9 ft tall and 12 feet wide.  Like the other two artists, Chris Shaw and Chuck Sperry whose work can be found in the adja­cent win­dow spaces, Dono­van chose the female as his sub­ject mat­ter. She appears all encom­pass­ing: part super hero, part vixen, part rock star and part Hindu goddess.

For Ron­Don™, she rep­re­sents strength; and like every­thing (or at least most things he sees in life), the dichoto­mous struc­ture from which its mean­ing is cre­ated.  Strength reflects char­ac­ter­is­tics that may seem con­tra­dic­tory: strength requires vul­ner­a­bil­ity, reveal­ing one’s core truth, for exam­ple, not just courage of one’s con­vic­tions. You can­not have one with­out the other. In lay­ers of mean­ings depicted in sym­bolic adorn­ments, anti­quated and con­tem­po­rary, reli­gious and cul­tural, she is allur­ing yet fear­some. Her swords derive from Hindu iconog­ra­phy sym­bol­iz­ing enlight­en­ment, for use against the dark­ness of ignorance.

She is Keeper of the Gate and she is also strength: fierce and vul­ner­a­ble. She car­ries a Mayan head dress on her head, a chain of human skulls around her neck and sacred tools in her hands. Her form fit­ting fab­ric ref­er­ences Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ing and Amer­i­can cur­rency. She is a cross pol­li­na­tion of cul­tures and reli­gions iden­ti­fi­able with soci­eties around the world.   Wear­ing wings she is also like Garuda, the male winged Hindu god, the enor­mous myth­i­cal bird-like crea­ture with keen intel­li­gence and highly devel­oped orga­ni­za­tional abil­i­ties, rep­re­sent­ing the com­bined char­ac­ter­is­tics of ani­mals and divine beings.  Be it man, woman, of any cul­ture, of any reli­gion, “every reli­gion tells the same story,” says Dono­van, and we are one in the same.

Ron Dono­van (aka RonDon™)

Bay Area artist Ron Dono­van was raised in Hon­olulu, Hawaii. His father, a pio­neer­ing com­puter sys­tems sci­en­tist with a keen intel­lect, worked on spe­cial projects for the mil­i­tary and his mother, a home maker, wanted her son to pur­sue a pro­fes­sion, law or med­i­cine.  It was his father who encour­aged Donovan’s cre­ative nature and artis­tic abil­ity and sup­ported his desire to fol­low his pas­sion. Dono­van took his tal­ents to the main­land and stud­ied at Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts and Crafts in Oak­land, California.

It was the 80’s, Rea­gan was in office, yup­pies were the rage, invest­ment bank­ing a ris­ing pro­fes­sion, the mon­e­tary car­rot of cap­i­tal­is­tic dreams dan­gled in front of col­lege stu­dents of the era. Donovan’s inter­est in pol­i­tics and peo­ple found expres­sion through a dis­cov­ered pas­sion: silk screen­ing. His rebel­lious, humor­ous con­sti­tu­tion, immer­sion in the local art and music scene, per­son­able nature, and charis­matic per­son­al­ity uni­fied his peers.

Before long, he became well known for his rene­gade, abun­dant cre­ative energy and can­did expres­sion. Donovan’s Pacific Island back­ground and influ­ence invig­o­rated his focus on Amer­i­can polit­i­cal satire and rela­tions, and multi-cultural stud­ies. It was also in col­lege where he met Chris Shaw, fel­low col­lab­o­ra­tor in the exhi­bi­tion. Later, Dono­van met Sperry and set up a print­ing stu­dio, a Warho­lian fac­tory of sorts, at an old vacated San Fran­cisco fire­house on Polk Street. When they were asked to vacate in the 90’s, they crossed the bay and set up shop in West Oak­land, while retain­ing the orig­i­nal name, The Firehouse.

Today, with Shaw liv­ing nearby in his own live/work stu­dio, the group con­tin­ues to work, col­lab­o­rate, tour, debate and “hang-out.”  With a radi­ant work ethic, the three also con­tinue on, cre­at­ing their own indi­vid­ual art works as well as the rock posters for many famous bands that they them­selves have become known for.

via SFMOMA Artists Gallery: Ron Donovan’s “Keeper of the Gate”.