KQED Review: Happy Endings with Isabel Samaras at Varnish Fine Art

By Ben Marks | Nov 14, 2012

Castaway (Howell), 2012.

In her new and recent paintings at Varnish Art Gallery in San Francisco, on view through December 22, 2012, pop surrealist Isabel Samaras continues to employ the aesthetics and techniques of Old Master and neoclassical painters to re-imagine the story lines of 1960s TV shows and movies. At first blush, this seems like a lot of trouble to go to. After all, do we really care about the psychological trauma of Thurston Howell, III ofGilligan's Island? And so what if Jeannie and Samantha of I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched are depicted as secret lovers. Are such frivolous fictional characters worth all the attention Samaras so obsessively lavishes upon them?

Perhaps not, but Samaras' keen eye and intelligent sense of humor elevate these pop-culture icons to almost Madonna-like (as in Jesus' mother, not the pop singer) status. And then there's the precision of her painting, which draws us in, literally, as we find ourselves edging ever closer to her often intimate pieces, lest we miss even their tiniest details.

When the Cat's Away, 2012.

Samaras' skill with a brush may impress us and entice the eye, but it's her facility as a storyteller and her sensitivity to cultural nuance that ultimately make her work so successful. For example, When the Cat's Away imagines TV sitcom sirens Barbara Eden and Elizabeth Montgomery lounging naked in Jeannie's famous bottle. Samantha puffs on a cigarette (the classic postcoital trope) as Jeannie thumbs the pages of what Samaras says in an interview is a 1960s Playboy. Though completely unclad, there is nothing especially provocative or even sexual about these two idealized gals. In fact, their sexuality is cleverly calibrated to its era, when the oxymoronic goal of wholesale displays of flesh was nothing more than tasteful raciness.

Cloud Nine, 2012.

A favorite what-could-have-been scenario for Samaras is to pair the Adam West version of Batman with the Julie Newmar incarnation of Catwoman. In Cloud Nine, the caped crusader sits upon a cloud in a heavenly aerie, gazing adoringly through his mask at his nemesis, whose only weapons are a push-up bra and high heels. As she has done with Frankenstein and his would-be bride, with Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock, Samaras has created a parallel universe for her lovebirds so she might play cupid. Sure, she didn't have to depict the couple as if they were an undiscovered Easter egg hidden in some obscure corner of the Sistine Chapel, but I'm glad she did.

Castaway (Lovey), 2012.

These paintings can all be found in the "Today" section of the Varnish exhibition. Other new pieces include a quartet of modestly scaled henna-toned portraits of Ginger, Howell, Lovey and Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island, an even smaller painting of Wonder Woman (roughly 11-by-9 inches) and a substantial (42-by-42 inches) work called The Abduction of the Simian Women, which riffs on both Peter Paul Rubens and Planet of the Apes (in Samaras' version of Rubens' The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, the painting's action revolves around the human sympathizer Dr. Zira). In the middle is a collection of older pieces that have been produced as new prints on wood. And then in the back of the gallery is the "Yesterday" section, which includes a number of paintings dating back to 2006.

The Abduction of the Simian Women, 2012.

Of these, my favorite is easily The Bluebird of Happiness, from 2010. In it, a woman wearing a billowing blue dress is holding an open red fan, upon which is perched the aforementioned bluebird. At first we wonder why the woman's eyes appear slightly crossed, and why her controlled smile seems about to crack into an unabashed grin. Then we notice the soles of a man's shoes, heels up toes on the ground, as well as the outline of a man's shoulder blades and head rustling beneath the satin and silk, his face apparently buried deep in the woman's crotch. Now that's a happy ending.

                                                           The Bluebird of Happiness, 2010.

Isabel Samaras: Making a Better Yesterday Today is on view through December 22, 2012, at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco. For more information, visit varnishfineart.com.

http://www.kqed.org/arts/visualarts/article.jsp?essid=110696

The CARTWHEEL Interview with Isabel Samaras

By Keith Dugas 

October 29, 2012 on http://www.cartwheelart.com/

Look, I know you, dear CARTWHEEL reader, I know you. You’re wicked smart, probably very attractive, you have an unquenchable thirst for art, and you most certainly already know who Isabel Samaras is. Still, new art fanatics are born every day and for them a little background may be in order. So kids, Isabel Samaras is among the upper echelon of seminal pop surrealists. Her satirical takes on 60′s/70′s television characters in classical art motifs have been seen in countless books on the topic. She has shown alongside the likes of Mark Ryden,Todd Schorr, Shag, and Robert Williams in galleries across the globe. She grew up on the east coast and attended Parsons in NYC, but her most revered art teacher was in high school (waddup, Mr. Anderson!). She announced herself on the lowbrow art scene, and pretty loudly, with a series of bitingly funny paintings on vintage lunchboxes and TV trays. Currently she paints large (and small) scale oils on panel from her secret lair near Berkeley, where she resides with her husband, illustrator Marcos Sorensen, and their son. The gravitas of her work seems to have grown exponentially with her skills, without ever losing its sense of humor. Every new batch of Samaras paintings are more captivating than the last, and let’s face it, that’s a rare feat. Her latest exhibit, “Making a Better Yesterday Today” will feature  jaw-dropping new work alongside some of her greatest hits. The show opens November 3rd at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco.

I’ve been corresponding with Isabel for a couple of years now. As a self-taught artist I often reach out and bug artists that I admire, emailing them various technical questions and the like. It doesn’t always work out. A lot of artists are just jerks. Every so often though, you’ll come across a few who are charming and incredibly helpful. Isabel is among the latter. I first interviewed her last December for my blog, but it’s a damn fine honor to have a more in-depth chat with her here for CARTWHEEL. She’s simply a pleasure to talk to.

Here’s how it went:

What’s a typical day in the life of Isabel Samaras like? Do you have a strict routine or do you wait for inspiration?

I was just joking the other day that I have a five minute commute but sometimes it takes me three hours. I wish I had a strict routine, I’m really envious of artists who treat their work like a 9-to-5 job, clock in and out at regular hours. I’d love to say:  I clamber out of bed like a monkey on Red Bull, grab an apple and swing into the studio to hit the easel before the first light of dawn crests over the horizon!  But that is a total lie.  Every part of it except for the apple (I’m growing six kinds in the back yard, taking “an apple a day” to new heights).  Truth is I’m a total night owl — the day often gets snarled up with the business end of things, paperwork and day-to-day stuff, so I tend to stay up very very late painting because those are the Golden Hours when the phone isn’t ringing, nobody is asking me for anything, it’s fabulously quiet, and time seems to go kind of honey liquid and stretch out without any boundaries.  (This means I am pretty much non-functional in the mornings and look like something that shambled out of The Walking Dead.)

I do the apple a day thing too (fujis). What kinds are you growing?

I planted Fuji, Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, and something else I forget, but before you picture acres of rolling farmland I should confess that some of those are actually grafted onto one trunk!  Coolest thing ever, like a magic apple tree.  And this year they are so absurdly, ludicrously juicy and sweet they put store apples to shame.  (For which I take no credit whatsoever — it’s California, baby!  But when I get really stressed out or the fumes in the studio are too heady, a little garden time is always the cure.)

What new ideas or themes are you exploring in the Varnish show? What do you have in store for us?

Everyone keeps calling it a “return” because I’m working with 60s/70s pop culture again, but it felt very organic — basically all these ideas kind of tumbled out of my skull where I guess they’d been hiding, waiting for the right time.  One in particular I’ve had kicking around in my head for nearly ten years but I never felt up to the task, and was like this little voice suddenly whispered: “Okay, now, try it now.” I have so much affection for all this, there’s so much joy in it for me. Plus it’s fun to tackle things I simply wasn’t capable of before, I didn’t have the skill set when I was painting the TV trays, or that scale just wasn’t right.  Pretty vague, I know, but let’s see… there’s naked ladies with supernatural powers, and Apes from a certain planet, and castaways who thought they were going on a three hour tour, and a caped crusader finding bliss with a feline nemesis…

You’ve been working on this Varnish show for at least a year. Are you creating an entirely separate group of paintings for the La Luz De Jesus show in 2013?

Oh yeah, that’s the Far Off Distant Future at this point — I have a show in Rome between now and then, too!  (No rest for the wicked.)

Recently, I saw your work had been “appropriated” by some street artists. Is that more infuriating than flattering for you?

I guess it’s a little of both.  I mean obviously it’s great that someone liked an image I created enough to spend time stenciling it up onto a wall somewhere, but I don’t think I’m so well known that everyone who sees it is going to get that it’s my work — it wasn’t intended as an homage, know what I mean?  And when that image gets a ton of publicity I kinda feel like a dork going “Um, yeah, that’s actually my art…” This image we’re talking about — Batman kissing Robin — it’s not like I own that idea, other artists have done it too and I love that because the world cannot have enough images of Batman kissing Robin in it.  But maybe draw your own?

Secrets of the Batcave, Part 2

I wanted to get your take on artists resale rights. In May, a judge struck down the California law allowing artists a 5% resale royalty. What are your thoughts on that?

In twenty years of selling art in California, only one gallery ever paid me the 5%.  (Thank you, La Luz de Jesus, you rock.)  Maybe it just didn’t come up much. It would be nice to think that collectors never re-sold my work because they loved it too much to ever part with it, but most artists I know have never even heard of this law — it was like a myth people would whisper about (“Hey did you hear? Once this artist actually got a tiny bit of their resale price!”).  I doubt many of us will notice the difference; it might be more of an issue for higher end artists who’s work is sold at auction houses n’ wotnot.  Most people would probably say “Well if your work increased in value and sells for a higher price when it’s resold then that’s good for you, the artist, whether you get a taste of that money or not.”  But it was nice getting a taste of that resale money. Who doesn’t like finding a surprise check in the mail?

I want to get in a couple of technical questions. Do you make your oils from scratch?

Hells no!  I did make my own acrylic paints back in the day (which I used on the lunch boxes and TV trays). I’ve always been obsessed with the color red and there was a great little shop in the East Village in NY that sold pure pigments — they had the same ground pigment that was used to paint Ferrari’s, literally “Ferrari Red”. That made me exceedingly happy. But I’m pretty pleased with what I can buy in a tube now, and I’m crazy finicky about color.  (This quest for red perfection led to some interesting issues when I did my book “On Tender Hooks” with Chronicle — they took on the task of trying to reproduce my reds, which turned out to be quite a challenge and ended up necessitating an entirely new, additional color of ink being used as an overlay in the printing process to get the reds right!  It’s so great that they cared enough to go that extra mile.)

Do you use a damar varnish?

Not anymore — Mark Ryden told me it would lead to alcoholism!  (He said it yellows and cracks.)  I talked to some people who do art conservation at both MOMA and SFMOMA as well as other artists, and everyone said the same exact thing:  Soluvar.  And so far so good.  (My fingers are actually semi-glued together with it right now, which is making all this typing quite a challenge.  Thank you, spell check.)

The problem solving sock glove!

The sock glove is brilliant! How did that come about?

It sorta solved two problems for me — I have a really bad habit of resting my hand on my painting as I’m going along and “potato printing” wet little palm prints all over.  (Cursing and hollering usually follows.)  Somehow having my little sock mitts on makes me more aware of my hands and where I put them, plus I like to paint standing up and holding a rag is sort of a pain (only got the two hands, and you *really* don’t want a rag draping and swishing around over your wet painting).  I can wipe my brushes on my sock-clad hands as I go, keep the bristles pointed, clean off bits of the wrong paint, etc.  My friends give me their old socks, and also their styrofoam meat trays — I’m a vegetarian, but I love using them for paint palettes because they’re really lightweight. Sometimes I cut them up to make little “custom palettes” when I only need a couple colors for highlights and stuff, so I don’t have to hold a big unwieldy thing just to have a tiny dab of paint easily accessible.  (At this point you should sort of be picturing my painting set-up like the art equivalent of those “one man bands” where they have twelve musical instruments strapped to them.)

Hair, hands, eyes? What’s the most challenging thing to paint?

For me, hands.  I love painting all kinds of hair and fur and fabric — that’s the most fun part of any painting. Half the reason I’m so drawn to Baroque art is because they’ll just stick a bunch of red drapery in there for no apparent reason.  (Like Caravaggio’s St. Jerome — wrinkled old naked man in a white sheet contemplating a skull, very somber and bleak … and then there’s miles and miles of incredibly luxurious cardinal red velvety fabric draped all over the place.  Just ’cause.)  I almost always paint the eyes before everything else so I have somebody to talk to while I’m working. (I wish I were kidding.) Once they’re looking at me it’s like there’s some “there” there. But hands — I love love love hands, they are a real test and they can be so beautiful and expressive. Paint them wrong and they look absolutely ridiculous, like uncooked calamari. I did a whole series of hand paintings once because I wanted to see how much personality I could capture, how much “story” I could tell, with just a hand.  (Someday I’m going to do “A Show Of Hands.”  That will be the beginning of my “titles that make you groan” series.)

Redivivus (The Secret)

What’s your biggest pet-peeve about the art world?

Honestly? It kinda bugs me how galleries almost always want a fresh, new painting.  If this were rock n’ roll everybody would wanna hear their most beloved song!  I often wish I could just send my current favorite piece. Plus I have this theory that each painting just needs to get in front of the right person, its “match”, so they can make a love connection and go live happily ever after together. And that can’t happen if it’s sitting in a rack in my studio; the paintings need to get out there and do some speed dating, because it really works like that — right place, right time, right person walks in and *bam!*, cue the happy music. (Sometimes it’s not the first place that painting showed.  Or even the second.) I’m super happy because for my show at Varnish we’re kind of riffing on the show title (“Making a Better Yesterday Today”) by including a room of “today” paintings, the new pieces, *and* a room of “yesterday”, a little curated selection of some of my favorite older pieces. That’s kind of my dream, lots of opportunities for people to have that “love at first sight” moment.

One of the many fun things about viewing your art is playing “name the historical reference”. Your “Birth of Ginger” being a classic example. This new piece with Samantha and Jeannie chilling, presumably post-coitus in the bottle…are you referencing another painting there?

Not a specific painting, no.  For that piece I really wanted to capture the flavor of what “erotic” was at that time — it was saucy and coy, like Playboy of the early 60s as opposed to today — so that it would be in keeping with the era of the TV shows it’s referencing.  (The magazine she’s holding has a Cutty Sark ad on it from an actual 60′s issue of Playboy, I’ve got boxes of’ em.)  But it’s also a holla back to Orientalism — this period in art history when Europeans were hearing all these tantalizing stories about the mythic, exotic Middle East and things like harems which just set their imaginations on flaming overburn.  Ingres, one of my all time favorite painters, did a bunch of “Can you believe it, all these gorgeous women just waiting at your beck and call?!?” paintings.  And in a way I think the show “I Dream of Jeannie” was just like that, a “Can you believe it? A gorgeous genie, ready to grant his every wish!”  Except of course in my version she’s not interested in *his* wish — she’s found another hot supernatural blond who could join her inside her bottle for some “while the cat’s away” playtime.

I know Ingres is a huge influence on you, and you keep some pretty heavyweight art company. Are there any new, emerging artists your particularly excited by?

You know my problem? I can’t ever remember anyone’s name.  It’s really pathetic and I’ll blame it on all the varnish and solvents.  I see stuff all the time that completely knocks my socks off, either because it’s so well done that the level of craft is mind boggling, or it’s just so damn clever and smart that I’m both admiring it and kinda jealous. It’s not just the varnish eating my brain:  in 1981 they issued about 49,000 art degrees, but by 2009 it was up to 125,000.  There are a *lot* of us now, and some of the art people are making is really fantastic, but I cannot remember the names to save my life.

Your son must be about 12 now. Does he seem interested in following his parent’s path?

I just asked him and he said “Not really, no. Seems like a neat thing to do but currently I’m interested in other things.”  (Everybody’s gotta rebel against their parents.)  He likes to do stenciled airbrush designs on t-shirts, but at the moment he’s obsessed with competition level yoyoing. I kinda miss when he was into magic because I was trying to get him to grift spare change from people at art openings to do tricks (and then make it disappear — gotta start that college fund).

If you could just go crazy and curate a dream exhibit from any works in history, which would you choose?

Wow. The stuff that I would love to see in person, the stuff that really blows me away, is all the crazy detailed super-tight work of the Dutch and Flemish masters, the Italian Renaissance, and then of course Ingres. But there’s a lot of terrific, very obscure stuff scattered all over Europe that you can only stumble on when you’re in museums or lucky enough to peep someone’s private collection — they’re not famous, they’re kinda like the “one hit wonders” of the old art world, so not only are there no books about them, you can’t even find them on the interwebs!  I’d like to gather them up in one place for all of us to oggle at, because there is no other way you would ever even know they exist and some of them are incredible.

I’ve been going back and reading some old interviews with you. In a few, you mention the recurring theme of “unrequited love”? Does that still carry a particular resonance with you, and why? Are there examples of that in the new work?

I think it’s part of my “what if/why not” mindset, which I blame on a number of childhood influences (everything from science fiction books to the absurdity of TV shows where nobody ever seemed to clue into the potential love staring them right in their faces). It really tugs on my heartstrings any time someone can’t share or express their love — I think that’s why gay rights are so important to me, because to keep people from being able to share their lives is a crime against humanity.  And to some degree I think that feeling is sort of universal, it’s why “Romeo and Juliet” is so powerful, because it hurts to see love denied. Honestly I don’t know exactly where it comes from, but I most definitely do have this sort of Cupid-like desire to right wrongs, and one day I realized I could use my paint brush like a love-arrow. (I’d like to point out that I do *not* try to do this in real life — the few times I tried to set friends up on dates it was a complete disaster!)

You continue to show quite a lot in Rome. What’s your favorite place to go when you’re there (art related or not)?

Can I cheat?  My favorite place in Italy actually isn’t in Rome — it’s La Specola, a small natural history museum in Florence where they have an posivitely staggering collection of anatomical wax models from the 17th century. The best of these are life-sized beautiful women with real hair and pearl necklaces, reclining on silk cushions — with all their insides opened up and spilling out.  These were teaching models, copied from real corpses, but they are incredible works of art as well and I’ve always been drawn to this period in history when art and science were holding hands and skipping along together. They also have a lot of taxidermy animals including a hippo and a somewhat wonky lion. You could spend days in there, and I swear that big mangy cat is the source of every weird lion that appears in Italian old master paintings (being the only one they had to look at).  If I’m not allowed to cheat, the Capuchin crypt in Rome is spectacular.  Underneath the Santa Maria della Immacolata Concezione church they’ve got the bones out thousands of monks all beautifully arranged in these intricate architectural patterns and designs, skull mosiacs and even “the Crypt of the Pelvises.”  It sounds skin-crawlingly grisly but it’s stunning and the idea wasn’t to gross you out — the monks who did it (I think they started in the 1600s) wanted you to be reminded of your short life,  “What we are, you will become” and all that. (Rome also has a “Museum of Purgatory”, which is really just a room in a church, but it’s full of artifacts that are supposed to show evidence of souls in purgatory trying to communicate with the living, like books that have hand prints burned into them.)Rome also has some supremely kick ass gelato and at the Colosseum you can have your picture taken being stabbed by gladiators!

Will you be attending Art Basel Miami this year?

Absolutely and I can’t wait, ART DISNEYLAND!  Completely exhausting but all us hermity types get to see each other, so it’s a bit like the high school reunion you actually *want* to go to.

I saved the best for last. If someone wanted to win your affections through chocolate, what kind would do it?

The pure uncut cocaine of the chocolate world: organic extra dark.  No wacky flavors or add-ins or toppings, just really, really good, really really dark chocolate.

Thanks Isabel!

By the way folks, I’d  be remiss if I failed to mention that Isabel has one of the best artist blogs going. Seriously, check it out.

“Making a Better Yesterday Today” will run from Nov. 3 through Dec. 22, 2012

opening reception Saturday, November 3rd, 6pm – 9pm

 

Varnish Fine Art

16 Jessie Street, #C120

San Francisco, CA 94105

(415)433-4400

Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm

 

CARTWHEEL will be adding more photos of the new work after the show opens, so stay tuned.

 In the meantime, wanna see her studio?

 

Isabel during battle.

The easel, where the magic happens.

Options are important!

She’s got a thing for filberts.

Daily affirmation.

…because it can get lonely in the studio.

The baroque pallete.

Don’t be scared.

Endless inspiration.

The hero wall!

The art studio must-have, a fully stocked bookshelf.

All photos courtesy of Isabel Samaras.

 

Peeling Back the Layers: An Interview with Chris Mars

Self-taught artist Chris Mars seeks to create a voice for the voiceless; to offer love to the unloved and mercy to the condemned and banished through his work. With his highly developed technical craft, Mars conceptually challenges preconceived judgment; be it one of beauty, hideousness or the nature of truth.

Prior to gaining critical acclaim as a painter, Mars became internationally known in the music world as the drummer for the Replacements. He has added to these accomplishments with growing admirers in the filmmaking world for his animation and live-action shorts.  Mars’ oil paintings are in the permanent collections of many museum collections, and feature prominently in museum exhibits throughout North America. In 2011 a selection of his film shorts was screened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and his paintings were exhibited at Halle St. Pierre, Paris, France, where he will be returning in 2013. Mars lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Chris graciously answered some questions for us about his work and process, revealing the complex layers of thought, craft and expression that go into his creative outpourings.

Level 5 (2012) Oil on Panel 24 x 28"

"The collection at The Louvre is epic, but as an artist I was struck by the reality that so many pieces there were commissioned - created not exclusively in response to an artist’s vision or calling but rather in service to the elite, or the church.  Level 5 demonstrates my elated relief upon entering The Pompidou, Paris’s museum of contemporary art. "

• What is your fine art background/education? 

Smoke & Mirrors: The Ransom & Mitchell Interview

Ransom & Mitchell is the fine art nom de plume for the artistic collaborations of Jason Mitchell & Stacey Ransom. Director-photographer Jason Mitchell and set designer-photo illustrator Stacey Ransom create highly-detailed and visually-lush photographic portraits & scenarios. Their work is narrative in nature and draws upon the darker undercurrent that exists within all aspects of society. They aim to create worlds that cannot exist, through a unique combination of cinematic lighting, theatrically designed sets and an illustrative approach that is inspired by the Italian and Dutch Master painters. Their meticulous mind-set and skills were honed in their years of working on motion picture films and they still often create short films to accompany their photo works. 

They took some time out of their crazy schedule to answer our questions about their backgrounds, their individual and collaborative processes and shifting between the worlds of commercial and fine art. Their debut solo exhibition of photo illustrations will be on view at Varnish September 8 - October 27, 2012. Opening Reception: Saturday September 8, 6-9pm.

Ophelia, 2012

Archival Print on Paper

The two of you have created a very successful motion and photographic studio (Purebred Studio) that produces commercial work. What inspired you to begin doing portraits of musicians, artists and writers?

We both have histories rooted in photography, Jason as a photo & film journalist and myself (Stacey) as a Creative Director for a variety of 

Last Week to See Jennybird Alcantara's "Creatures of Saintly Disguise"

Jennybird's amazing solo show Creatures of Saintly Disguise will be coming to a close on Saturday, July 28. If you haven't made it in yet, swing by during our normal business hours, Tues-Sat 11am - 6pm. In the meantime, here's a beautiful view put together by Kerri:

For those without Adobe Flash capability, head over to the exhibit page HERE

Chuck Sperry Interview for "Occupy Bay Area" at YBCA

SF Bay Guardian Interview: 

To be a poster artist during Occupy: Chuck Sperry on psychedelic art, social change, and port shutdowns

July 20, 2012
Caitlin Donohue

"No one directed us to make these posters. No one asked. We just did it. And passed them out."

With Occupy's first anniversary sneaking up on us, has enough time past since its inception to reflect on its urban encampments and frightening conflicts with law enforcement in a rational, reasonable manner? Maybe rational is the wrong word -- I'm sure many would agree that the movement's major contributiont to date was a general firing up of the 99 percent, even of those 99 percenters who would sooner have ridden a bike to work than sit in on GA meeting in Oscar Grant Plaza. Through leaving its agenda undefined, Occupy allowed us all to paint our own hopes and dreams for the world onto it like a piece of drawing paper. 

For some more literally than others. This month, an exhibit opened at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that accumulates the work of 25 Bay Area artists who spun their Occupy dreams into poster form. Chuck Sperry is perhaps one of the most well-known name of the bunch. Sperry's lived in the Bay since 1989, and recently came home early from a camping trip to answer our questions about his relationship with Occupy, the way he distributed his "This Is Our City And We Can Shut It Down" prints on the day of the Oakland port shutdown, and general "what does art mean" token asks. 

SFBG: At what moment did you realize that Occupy was an important event? How did you first hear about it? 

CS: Through the beginning of 2011, I was creating an installation for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curated by Renee de Cossio, with artists Chris Shaw and Ron Donovan. Each artist would install work in one of three artists' gallery windows on the side of the SFMOMA on Minna Street. The proposal for the installation was to bring the aesthetic of San Francisco's poster traditions to painting, and to realize these in monumental form. I wanted this piece to reflect San Francisco's poster history beginning in the freedom of speech movement through the 1960's, and to also reflect the psychedelic tradition that gave birth to the rock poster.

While I was working on an 11-foot by nine-foot acrylic painting, I was following the progress of the Arab Spring movements, Tahrir Square, and the gathering Occupy Wall Street movement that was spreading across America. I decided to use my reaction to these events as inspiration for an iconographic painting titled, "Saint Everyone." I wanted to express the opening mind, and spreading enlightened humanism, the decentralization of power -- or awakening sense of people power -- to the piece. I used vibrating, reactive colors to paint a figure holding an opening lotus (symbol of enlightenment), against a background of op-art circles, which communicate decentralization -- that the background has many centers -- like the movement which has no leaders.

"Saint Everyone" was installed at the SFMOMA in June 2011. So I was getting with it by then.

As Occupy Oakland was forming by the fall of 2011, my artist friend Jon-Paul Bail of Political Gridlock was printing his iconographic "Hella Occupy Oakland" posters on Frank Ogawa Plaza (re-named Oscar Grant Plaza) from the point when people were first gathering there. When I say printing, Jon-Paul Bail was printing live, right there, with a table set up in the open, printing and handing people freshly-made posters. In a few short weeks he had printed hundreds, if not, thousands of posters which were being handed out to people there. He was joined there on Oscar Grant Plaza by Melanie Cervantes and Jesus Barraza of Dignidad Rebelde, who created more iconographic posters for the Occupy movement.

SFBG: What led to your decision to make art inspired by Occupy? Was it a different process than your other creative projects?

CS: In September I was in an art show, LA VS. WAR, with Bail, Barraza, and Cervantes, (among others) and we discussed making posters for the November 2 Occupy action to close the Port of Oakland. Fellow artist Chris Shaw -- who was involved in the SFMOMA Window Gallery Installation -- offered to pay for the production of any Occupy posters through the printing account of rock band Moonalice who was in solidarity with Occupy. 

I created "This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down." I usually work with images and take a lot of time to work my art into a design. In this case, the message was so overriding and important that I felt it was my job as an artist to stay out of the way, and let the words and message do their job. So in this way it was different. I used color theories learned in studying the long San Francisco tradition of psychedelic poster art, the use of hot colors against cold colors to make the words read from a half mile away -- haha! I wanted a strong, radical message, used with bold nurturing colors that convey a positive emotion. It would not be a typical political poster.  

SFBG: How do you want your Occupy poster to be used?

CS: Chris Shaw and I discussed printing our posters on heavy paper stock, and printing on both sides to double the exposure we could give people to our message. You could use this poster as a placard, hold it up over your head. It would make quite an impression and be useful to the action. I stood at Oscar Grant Plaza next to the street and passed out nearly 1000 posters in 45 minutes to the front of the march, so when television camares picked up the action at the Port of Oakland, the front of the march was a sea of my poster with the message, "This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down." No one directed us to make these posters. No one asked. We just did it. And passed them out.

SFBG: What's been some of your favorite protest art throughout history?

CS: I am very inspired by Emory Douglas' art in the Black Panther Party newspaper. I've had the honor to work with Mr. Douglas to reprint some of his iconic images. I also am very fond of the French Situationist posters of May 1968, and had the good fortune to print a poster, while I was visiting Paris to make a poster show about five years ago, on the very same press that produced these memorable images. When my artist friend told me that Guy Debord had worked with artists on this very same press, I laughed and dropped to my knees and just could not believe it.

Sperry at Occupy

I invited Jon-Paul Bail to collaborate in teaching a class at the Free University of San Francisco, as I'm organizing the art department of that cooperatively-organized free school. We told the story of making posters for the Occupy movement and created a poster for the Occupy Education action last spring. I think the ideas coming together from the Occupy protests will move through society in a very healthy and transformative way. There's no way to stop people once they have been awakened to their potential. 

SFBG: What is the role of art in social protest?

CS: Art can reach many people in many walks of life. I was invited by San Francisco's Varnish fine art gallery to exhibit at SCOPE / Miami in conjunction with Art Basel Miami art fair. Even in the context of the fine art world I felt it was important to express the social revolution that was taking place through the Occupy movement, and created a piece titled, "Mind Spring," which expressed some of the same ideas I put in my SFMOMA painting and my Occupy poster. In "Mind Spring", I created an icon of the worldwide Occupy movement and it’s antecedent in the Arab Spring. The figure wreathed in blooming spring flowers is a representation of the surprising enlightened humanism, the opening mind, the broadened socio-political possibilities which has swept the world in 2011.

I've had many discussions about the role of political art over the years. Two solutions to this problem constantly come to mind, first, "content over style" -- that content is more important than style. Your message is the most important element in creating art of social protest. Second, that "the personal is political", your own experience is so very often shared by others all over the world. When you make a piece of art in social protest, and just tell your story from your own perspective, and you do not hold back, you will be describing a situation that is shared by others half a world away. It's uncanny, but our local problems are very similar to everyone else's globally. So get in there and try to change what you can from where you are. Many hands make light work.  

"Occupy Bay Area"

Through Oct. 14

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-ARTS

www.ybca.org

Saint Everyone, 2011
Chuck Sperry

Mind Spring, 2011
Chuck Sperry

UPDATED from SFBG.com

Beyond the Veil: An interview with Jennybird Alcantara

Painter Jennybird Alcantara  is best known for minutely detailed oil paintings filled with a symbolism that draw the viewer deeply into a world both strange and beautiful.  At its core her work has a dreamlike narrative that emanates from a central figure, encouraging us to contemplate the complex interconnectedness of opposites as seen through the prism of myth, fable and fantasy. 

She took some time from working on her upcoming solo show at Varnish Fine Art, Creatures of Saintly Disguise (June 9-July 28, 2012) to answer a slew of questions about the ever unfolding universe of characters and symbols emerging from her brush. 

When did you know you wanted to be an artist?

I did art as a kid, like everybody does art as a kid. Officially I’d say, when I made this kind of announcement in my head that I didn’t want to be a veterinarian anymore, was probably around 11 or 12 years old. I didn't really know what being an “artist” meant, but I knew it was something I really enjoyed, that I was good at it and that I got praise for it from my parents.

My mom and her best friend were crafters. They would make cradles and sell them at these craft fairs and I’d paint the little teddy bear scenes on the front of the cradle. My friend Sheri and I started making little clay teddy bear dolls and little sculpted teddy bears in chairs and things and they let us have a little section of the booth. So from the time I was a kid I was always doing arts and crafts kind of stuff. It would be fun to find one of those cradles, "The first Jennybird sale!"

Struggle in the Garden of the Porcelain Queen 2009
 Oil on Wood
40 x 60" (diptych)