Chuck Sperry

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Archives for March 2014

March 4, 2014 By squirt

“Don’t Panic!” Hangar 18 Open House, Friday, March 28, 2014

I’m very happy to announce, an Open House at Hangar 18 Studio Gallery on Friday, March 28, 2014 from noon to 6 pm. So “Don’t Panic!”

WSPNYE33

I would love to welcome the Widespread Panic family to Oakland, California and give everyone a warm welcome to the my studio. This is a great opportunity to visit the print studio that gave birth to some of your favorite posters for your favorite band. I’ll be making a Widespread Panic art show, with some special prints and rarities available. There will be some special announcements in the coming weeks!

(I won’t be able to respond with news to anyone, individually, for the moment, in regard to what will be offered or shown, let’s just sit back, and enjoy the surprises on Friday, March 28!)

Burroughs

Hangar 18 Studio Gallery is also proud to introduce guest printmakers, John Hancock and Carlos Hernandez, who will be making a special printmaking demonstration on Friday, March 28, 2014 from noon to 5pm.

 “Burroughs Screen Print Mash-Up”

John Hancock & Carlos Hernandez live screen print demonstration

at Hangar 18 Studio Gallery

1428 34th Street, Oakland, CA

Event: Friday, March 28, 2014 • noon to 6 pm

John Hancock of The Amazing Hancock Brothers and Carlos Hernandez will showcase their “dirty” printmaking with their Burroughs Screen Print Mash-Up, presented by Speedball Art Products.  The process is collaborative, frenetic, fast and democratic.  A set number of images are chosen, put into screens and are printed in a seemingly random manner.  The prints created will celebrate the life of postmodernist author and artist William S. Burroughs, who was born 100 years ago this year. Considered to be one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century, Burroughs has affected a wide range of popular culture. He was a primary figure of the Beat Generation, which began in New York and eventually relocated to San Francisco, when the central members (minus Burroughs) ended up here together.

John Hancock and Carlos Hernandez are joining forces to celebrate the Southern Graphics Council International printmaking conference which will be convening at San Francisco’s Hyatt Regency, Embarcadero, with a multitude of additional participating organizations, from March 26 to March 30, 2014.

The Southern Graphics Council International (SGCI), the largest print organization in North America, is holding it’s annual conference in The Bay Area. SGCI annual conference is the biggest annual gathering focused on the field of printmaking. Artists from all 50 states, as well as international artists, attend the conference. The 42nd annual conference will be held in the San Francisco Bay Area, the first West Coast conference in the organization’s history. Bridges, this year’s conference theme, will investigate the intersections between traditional and emerging technologies, between art, communication and activism.

Speedball Art Products, who produce a complete line of block printing and screen printing supplies, as well as other fine art supplies, is sponsoring the Screen Print Mash-Up at Hangar 18.  Their screen printing products will be used exclusively during the Burroughs Screen Print Mash-Up.

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The Burroughs Screen Print Mash-Up will be hosted by Chuck Sperry at Hangar 18, his silkscreen print studio located in Oakland. Sperry has honed his craft of designing and hand screen printing for over 15 years to become recognized throughout the world as one of the foremost rock poster artists and printmakers. Elevating the craft to fine art, he creates socio-political artwork beyond rock.

Infamous “low-tech” print masters, Texas-born The Amazing Hancock Brothers look to shock as much as inform. Their bold, unabashed style combines screen printing, woodcuts, and acrylic into mixed-use pieces that resemble part Circus Freak posters, part insane patterns, and all crazy, in-your-face attitude. Brothers Charles and John often throw all sense of propriety out the window, then rip down the curtains, screen clowns or skulls or grotesque portraits on them, and then throw that out the window, too. As members of Dirty Printmakers of America, they are able to use their ferocious, fearless talent to push the awareness and accessibility of printmaking to the huddled masses, democratizing art and technique.

A member of the infamous Outlaw Printmakers, Houston-based serigraphy artist Carlos Hernandez has had his work featured in the 2011 Communication Arts Typography annual, the 2011 & 2012 Communication Arts Illustration annual and was also recently published in the 2012 book Mexican Graphics by Korero Books-UK.  He has designed and printed gig posters for such artists as The Kills, Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Santana, and more. Most recently, he was selected as the official poster artist to design the commemorative poster for the 2013 Austin City Limits Music Festival. Carlos is a founding partner of Burning Bones Press, a full-service printmaking studio located in the Houston Heights, and serves as an instructor of Screen Printing at Rice University, Department of Visual and Dramatic Arts.

Filed Under: Events, News, Rock Posters Tagged With: Carlos Hernandez, John Hancock, SGCI, Southern Graphics Council International, Widespread Panic, William Burroughs

March 3, 2014 By squirt

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” Film Poster

The Astor Theatre recently had the pleasure of screening the American cinema classic ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. Over three nights audiences were treated to the second film ever to win all five major Academy Awards; Best Picture, Best Actress in a Lead Role, Best Actor in a Lead Role, Best Director and Best Screenplay (adapted).

Tommy Good invited Sperry to do a poster for the film; as Inside The Rock Poster Frame, said, “To celebrate the screening Tommy Good had another American classic create a poster for them, the awesomely talented artist and printmaker Chuck Sperry.”

The Astor Theatre along with Roadshow Entertainment are extremely proud to present One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s by Chuck Sperry in a regular and variant edition.

Chuck-Sperry-One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoos-Nest-poster-Regular

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” – Regular
20″ x 28″
Edition of 200
5 colors on archival cream paper
Artist signed and hand numbered
Printed by Hangar 18

Chuck-Sperry-One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoos-Nest-poster-Variant

“One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” – Variant
20″ x 28″
Gold Edition of 40
5 colors on gold metallic paper
Artist signed and hand numbered
Printed by Hangar 18

The posters will be available in the TommyGood store (Tommygood.com) on Friday March 7 Morning Sydney, Australia time (after 9am).
Which is Thursday March 6 after lunch Los Angeles time and Thursday late evening London time..

Subscribe to the mailing list on the Tommy Good website and follow their twitter account@thisistommygood for drop info.

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My first reaction was to make a poster featuring Jack Nicholson, in his role as McMurphy. Then after a few rough drafts, I set about working on a poster featuring Nurse Mildred Ratched, played by Louise Fletcher, the role for which  she won the Oscar.

Nurse Ratched is a perfect subject for an art piece as America is struggling to reform it’s health care system. She is the embodiment of a dehumanizing American medical establishment, a figure without pity, one who punishes the objects of her prejudice through bureaucratic sadism.

I chose to depict Nurse Ratched from the perspective of her victims. The impact of this poster is that it is intended to be a portrait of her, as if it were done in art therapy by one of her patients.

I chose a psychedelic presentation, using psychedelic color theory and using what I’ve learned about the science of optical perception. I overlaid my psychedelic presentation with techniques drawn from outsider art, or art of the insane.

I remembered the work of artist Louis Wain, the popular and widely published early 20th Century prosaic cat artist.

Wain lost his mind late in his career, either from a progressive schizophrenia, or through exposure to toxoplasmosis (a disease that is often passed to humans by cats). He was institutionalized and started to create incredible cat paintings, which have been published in Psychology textbooks as an illustration of the disintegration of the human mind.

Louis_wain_cats

Louis Wain was a perfect starting point for a psychedelic portrait of Nurse Ratched , from the point-of-view of one of her patients.

Wain often employed psychologically troubling, perfectly symmetrical compositions, and toiled with precise and obsessive geometric details which were meticulously mirrored on both sides of his symmetrical paintings. My design utilizes this symmetry and geometric detail to achieve this baffling effect.

The blue forms are crenelated and manifold, so as to maximize the number of boundaries of contact between the two vibrating colors, red and blue.

Chuck-Sperry-One-Flew-Over-the-Cuckoos-Nest-poster-Regular-1

 

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I used Eye-fry complimentary contrasting color, blue and red, taking care in my studio to custom mix them using fluorescent pigments in powder form, to an equal intensity. In brief, the resulting psychological effect on the optic nerve is that the color receptors are confused where the two colors meet.

CUCKOO-TONAL

Subtly printed over the finished piece is a light translucent grey halftoned portrait of Nurse Ratched, which I also flipped from a xerox and created a perfectly symmetrical face. The symmetrical, light halftone photo a secret image and appears in two ways. One way is to view the poster in UV backlight. The other way is to convert a photo of the poster into black and white (easy to do with the “Willow” or “Inkwell” Instagram filters). The perfectly equal red and blues meet at the same value of grey and allow the Nurse Ratched halftone portrait to appear very clearly.

The resulting poster for “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” is a combination of many of the techniques I’ve learned about printing, design, art aesthetics, psychology and the science of optical perception, appropriately used for one of the greatest American films.

Filed Under: Art Prints, News Tagged With: Chuck Sperry, exclusive, Inside The Rock Poster Frame, movie poster, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Tommy Good, World Premiere

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About Chuck Sperry

Chuck Sperry lives in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, where he’s made his particular style of rock poster designs for over 20 years. He operates Hangar 18, a silkscreen print studio, located in Oakland. Learn More…

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Sperry Books: “Color x Color” • “Helikon” • “Chthoneon” • “Idyllion”

Latest Blog Posts

  • Sperry Solo “Universal” Coming to Paris
  • Sperry in Popland 2025 at KochxBos Gallery, Amsterdam
  • Chuck Sperry’s Alice Donut Poster
  • Chuck Sperry’s “The Mystic” & “Iphigenia” Blotters • 
Online Release with EQL
  • Available Now: Chuck Sperry’s Newest Protest Art Poster

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