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Chuck Sperry: There was a violent police riot in The East Village of Manhattan where I lived in 1989, and about that time I moved to San Francisco, because New York was a combination of very heavy and very expensive.
Once settled in San Francisco, I started work on an underground newspaper called Filth Weekly Weird News, as the art editor. I contacted many, many artists to make covers and comics: Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, S. Clay Wilson, Rigo 23, Victor Moscoso, and Gary Grimshaw.
I worked at Comic Relief comic book store on Haight Street in the early 1990’s. Nancy Langhofer, my lovely life-partner, was the store supervisor. We had such a blast at that store! She sort of let me run a Filth Magazine editorial office from the front counter cash register, as long as I sort of worked too. As comic store clerk / art editor, I often got contacts with artists when they visited the store.
Robert Crumb came in to shop with Spain Rodriguez. Spain was cool, I had run a cover of his in Filth Magazine. When Crumb came to the counter to buy his comics, I asked him to contribute to Filth. He hates that sort of thing! But Spain said really gently and cool in his ear, “Robert, these guys are really cool. You should!” Crumb kind of grimaced and said, “Oh alright. I’ll look at your … what is it? … Filth.” He came back about 40 minutes later and handed me his sketchbook, and said, “Which one of these do you want? Here, have a look.” When I chose a bunch of drawings with post-it bookmarks, he asked, “Where’s the copy machine?” I directed him to the pharmacy across the street and gave him a handful of dimes.
When Crumb returned he said, “You know I’m doing this because you guys are a bunch of pathetic losers, and you will never succeed.” It was like he was welcoming me to the club!
I showed my work to art director Arlene Owseichik at Bill Graham Presents, and she hired me to make posters for The Fillmore in 1994. The Fillmore had opened up again in 1993 and I received my first poster commission for Superchunk. I’ve done about 15 posters for The Fillmore; I made posters for Hot Tuna, Chris Cornell, Los Lobos, Flogging Molly, Gov’t Mule, Pennywise, and Circle Jerks.
My favorite Fillmore poster was F1000 (their 1000th poster design) for The Pretenders in 2009. I got to go off on my Pretenders poster with spot silver metallic ink; I conferred with their printer, Great Impressions, to run a tinting color over the silver ink — in an offset version of my unique silkscreen printing style.
When we met in 1994, Ron Donovan and I each had a Fillmore poster or two under our belt. Ron was working with Orion Landau in a company they had together called the Psychic Sparkplug — their studio was about 144 square feet with a loft. We called it the Chemical Box, sometimes Squishy Womperland, because the toxic oil based inks left a heavy atmosphere in there. Ron and Orion had worked out the ink system using Nazdar oil-based inks, along with the paper I would use for about ten years — a heavy, coated Carolina paper stock. Ron and Orion and I printed posters together at the Psychic Sparkplug for about two years. With them, I made posters for Steel Pole Bath Tub, Jawbreaker, Man or Astroman, The Vandals, SNFU, Fear (my first rock poster with Ron), among others.
In the spring of 1996 Orion Landau moved to the East Coast. Ron and I went on the form The Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company by the end of the year. Our original studio was actually a firehouse with a pole and firetruck in it. Operating a print shop and having the time of our lives at Station 4, an abandoned San Francisco Fire Department fire station, allowed me to grow exponentially as an artist.
Working in an abandoned firehouse with permission of a firefighters’ union boss had many advantages — first and foremost among those was the fact that I did not have to pay rent. This lucky situation granted Ron Donovan and me a fighting chance as artists, because the union’s generosity gave us the chance build our fledgling rock poster design and print studio into a force. Beneath this protective umbrella of permission and no rent, we booked big paying jobs for Virgin Megastore developing our series of posters for them, and I dove into my poster series for Incredibly Strange Wrestling — both poster series are represented in Haight Street Art Center exhibition: Home Show.
I’ve made signature posters for Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Eric Clapton, Mickey Hart, Patti Smith, Joan Jett, Joe Strummer, and The Beatles. I’ve made cool rock posters for Black Sabbath, MC5, Pearl Jam, DEVO, Blondie, Soundgarden, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, and The Black Keys. I have done multiple posters for favorites Widespread Panic, Ben Harper, Dave Matthews, Leftover Salmon, and Umphreys McGee. Recently, I made some damned fine posters for newcomers Twiddle and Greensky Bluegrass. There’s been two or three really cool posters, two skateboards and project collaborations with Nick Cave. Most of these will be featured throughout the Haight Street Art Center’s retrospective of my work.
Haight Street Voice: Elysia, who graces the cover of this edition of Haight Street Voice — tell me what she means to you. What inspired you to do the goddess series?
CS: ”Elysia” is a riff on the Greek word for heaven. I’ve drawn her with a curvilinear mane of flowing hair, crowded with bright flowers which sparkle and shine wonderfully like fireworks in different colors, shapes and sizes. I like to imagine her to be the embodiment of the utopian ideals at the heart of the Haight-Ashbury, the socio-political experiment that started in our neighborhood in the mid-1960’s and continues loudly and proudly to the present day.
As for what has inspired my creation of the muse series. In October of 2006 I was invited to Athens, Greece to be featured solo at an international counter-cultural art festival called Babel Festival. I arrived a week early, and spent time alone following my nose randomly around the ancient capitol, and was somehow drawn quite forcefully to the sanctuary of the muses on the Pnyx. I made an offering there, and the rest has been my journey. Soon the muses infused my imagination.
Ten years and a lot of art making later in 2016, New York Times bestselling author, Charles Bock wrote the introduction to my first muse art book, Helikon, saying:
“I believe that the gods and goddesses are attributes of the mind,” Chuck told me, in an email that, it seems to me, is the real point of this book, the real point of what this man has been doing for all these years. “What may appear on the face of things like a variety of pagan reverence is really a celebration of the human spirit.”
HSV: Speaking to this Season of the Witch edition, the divine feminine, and being on the edges of the possibility of a female president. How are you feeling about today’s world?
CS: My feeling about today’s politics is that over the long arch of time each generation is getting a little bit better at it getting along. There’s a concomitant reactionary backlash. The progressives represent the future, and the reactionaries represent a return to the past. The country, the world, is clearly in a struggle to move into the future and toward equality and universal human rights. I’m optimistic about Kamala Harris, and I hope she wins! But don’t just hope, VOTE!
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HSV: What does Season of the Witch mean to you?
CS: At first blush, I think of October, but on a deeper level, and there is a very deep level here, the Season of the Witch means that women are at the very center of society and political change. Especially today. Especially in the 2024 election. But politics and elections are the superficial aspects of a deeper struggle.
The root of human community are in matriarchy. In ancient times matriarchal power was overthrown. There is an epic age-old conflict being struggled with throughout the world: when will women be acknowledged in their power.
Breaking that down to face a central American political issue: that’s to say, when will the Equal Rights Amendment be included into the United States Constitution? “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” How about that? How about now.
Women are focusing their physical and mental energy on this issue. Women are also so focused during the 2024 election: suddenly, quite magically (some might say) we are in an archetypical struggle between a violent, lying, beast-man and the future — the hopes and dreams of humanity — to elect America’s first woman president.
Season of the Witch communicates sense that we are in an era when all hell breaks loose and the hen comes home to roost.
Second question: Goddesses are the natural powers, and witches are tuned sages who call upon these powers. I channel the images of these elemental powers into my art. What you do with them is up to you.
HSV: Your living in the Haight, do you feel that the light that lit the ’60s is still shining here?
CS: The light still shines in the Haight, you better believe it! There’s a spirit that wraps Haight-Ashbury like a sweet fog. We know. The Haight Ashbury Street Fair was excellent this year, a cool celebration of the best of San Francisco’s bright spirit. Eric McFadden rocked the house! We go way back. Moonalice was great! Fun fact: the San Francisco Mime Troupe stages their annual Labor Day play in the Panhandle smack in front of my apartment. Our tradition. I love it here!
HSV: Your retrospective show at HSAC. How does that feel, it being here in the neighborhood?
CS: I’ve had an incredible decade. I have had the good fortune to self-publish four art books under the Hangar 18 moniker: Color x Color: The Sperry Poster Archive 1980–2020; Helikon: The Muses of Chuck Sperry; Chthoneon, The Art of Chuck Sperry; and Idyllion: The Art of Chuck Sperry. My poster book Color x Color is in its third printing, and is being sold at San Francisco’s de Young Museum and Legion of Honor bookstores — since April this year. I love that the San Francisco Museums support my art! And we’ve sold a truckload of books in six months, so I get to give back to the museum by working together.
Fort Wayne Museum of Art has a 1000 poster special collection of almost every poster I’ve created. I have posters in the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts collection, Oakland Museum, and the SFMOMA has included my work in their permanent collection this year.
I make shows in New York and Los Angeles and all over the USA. Every year I make a couple of shows in Paris, Geneva and Amsterdam. In December 2024 I’ll be shown at Art Basel / Context Art Fair for my 8th time with Harman Projects.
No one is more surprised than me that I even bought a house in the South of France, and I get to spend part of the year in France making art — all that without losing any foothold in San Francisco. I have lived in the same apartment on the Panhandle for 34 years with my brilliant wife Nancy Langhofer, the love of my life. My dreams are very much coming true!
Being institutionally recognized here on home turf is a recent turn of events. My heart is very warmed. The Haight Street Art Center is welcoming me home with this massive exhibition. I’m thrilled!
I’m honored to exhibit my art at the Haight Street Art Center. I love the work it is engaged in. I am impressed by the spirit of the Art Center team and vision of Executive Director Kelly Harris. (True story: I met Kelly Harris at a Bon Iver concert and stoked her band a stack of my posters for the show.)
The exhibitions the Art Center host, the content they support, and exhibition designs by Renée de Cossio and team — all are always top-notch. Most importantly, Curator Ben Marks has done a brilliant job, and has spared no effort to bring together an insightful and beautiful exhibition — hats off to Ben! It’s wonderful to be understood by an art curator who has great skills and insight. I feel very honored and supported.
HSV: Haight Street Voice is “hyper local with a global perspective”: What would you like to say to the Haight community — and communities everywhere?
Take courage. The truth will out. Beautiful justice is stronger than the tyrannical forces of injustice. Hold on to common decency. Be calm. This ugly era shall pass, and humanity will rise higher and brighter. And please don’t forget to dance in the meantime.
If you dig rock posters then check out my show: it opens at the Haight Street Art Center October 17 and runs until November 24. Love to see you there!
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