Primus Santa Barbara, California
Friday, October 21, 2011
17.75 x 25.25
Edition of 200
3 colors on archival white paper
Signed and Numbered
SOLD OUT – Thank You!
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I drew my Primus design the first thing in the morning the day I arrived in Paris, literally waking up after San Francisco’s Rock Poster Society’s Festival of Posters, in France, a little stunned, drinking morning coffee with my friends Léna Balacco who owns Sésame where I had my Paris poster show last Thursday. I started drawing right away laughing and rapping with Léna and husband Charles and their daughter Elvis, my god-daughter. Elvis likes dinosaurs and mythical monsters – so I drew this poster for her on a scrap of paper.
My good friend and former apprentice from the Beaux Arts, Alexandre d’Huy (who printed with me in Milan when I worked there) came over as I finished the drawing and color seps. Alex handed me a motorcycle helmet, and I hopped on the back of his Vespa and we flew across Paris to the silkscreen film-positive maker (a place with thousands of 1950s and 60s French movie posters hanging all over the walls) and made poster film separations. We buzzed south through Paris along the river on his Vespa to his studio in Vitry-en-Seine, a commie town with PCF posters everywhere, and I joked at a stoplight that we should use red, yellow and black like the commie posters pasted all around us, because you just can’t go wrong with that color scheme. Here’s a few photos of Alex and me printing in his secret graffiti lab in Paris.
Alex and I left the posters to dry and went to a little funk club called Les Oubliettes near Notre Dame on the Left Bank and climbed down a steep stone stair case to the catacomb cellar where Hemingway listened to jazz in the 1920′s, and we drank a couple beers in celebration. My San Francisco friend Jorge Gamboa put it nicely, “Chuck came outta cartooning. He hangs out with ultra uber wierdo French cartoonists in France. Him doin’ this in France makes sense. I like it. Primus is a goofy band anyway.”
Primus once called their music psychedelic polka. I was feeling the absurdity of that. Check this out – I flew from San Francisco to Paris to make a poster for a band from San Francisco – and then overnighted the poster back to California the next day – now THAT is goofy!
My dear friends at Sésame in Paris are making an exhibition of my posters and my friends’ posters Les Editions Pénibles from June 6 to July 10, 2011. I won’t be able to be at this opening, but I will be going to Sésame with my newest works in October 2011. If you’re in Paris you can go by Sésame on the side of the Canal St. Michel at 51 Quai de Valmy in the Xth Arrondissement, metro Republique. Alexandre D’Huy and Silvio Magaglio of Les Editions Pénibles will be present at the opening, and Léna Balacco, owner of Sésame, will be present most every day if you should like to have a great coffee, great food, friendly atmosphere and discuss rock n roll poster art.
Firehouse & Les Editions Pénibles
at Sésame, Paris, 51 Quai de Valmy, Xth Arrondissement, metro Republique
June 6 to July 10. 2011
Vernissage, June 6, 2011 at 7 pm.
Alexandre D’Huy and I broke away from The Original Sticker Story at rue Ternaux, for a beer in the afternoon at Les Nuns. I wanted to show him the string that was probably still hanging in Les Nuns, from 2004 the night we met. We arrived there and sure enough the string Ron and I put up at Les Nuns to hang posters from was still there. David, the bartender from Au Petit Garage, right down the street was stopping by Les Nuns to talk to a friend, and invited us over to Au Petit Garage for a drink. And wouldn’t you know it, there was the poster for The Art of Modern Rock opening that Ron and me and Lindsey Kuhn hung on the wall from five years ago.
David asked me and Alex if we would like to do a show the following night. And of course, the answer was YES! We had a great time! Lots of old friends showed for the fun. Was great to see Olivier Votelet and wife Marion and all the cool folks that inhabit the 11th of Paris. Thanks David! Hope to come back again real soon.
