Chuck Sperry

  • Blog
  • About
  • Press & Reviews
  • Contact
  • Store
  • Books: Color x Color • Helikon • Chthoneon • Idyllion

August 10, 2009 By squirt

Best of The East Bay Party

ChrisShawAlexFischer

The Oakland Museum of California – August 7, 2009

Figures that when Rock Poster Art gets invited to be exhibited in The Oakland Museum, it’s in the basement parking garage. Also figures that when WE INVADE the basement of the Museum – we draw a huge crowd down there! A genuine thank you to The Oakland Museum and The East Bay Express for a wonderful time.

ChuckSperrybasement

The East Bay Express and the Hangar 18 collective had a great time at The Best of The East Bay Party – a celebration of everything great about The East Bay. Many of you stopped by the Hangar 18 booth to see live silkscreen poster making and artwork by Chuck Sperry & Ron Donovan of The Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company, Chris Shaw, Alexandra Fischer, Political Gridlock, Alan Hynes, Scott Johnson & Lulu. Many thanks to our fans and “Keep it in the Basement!”

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Alan Hynes, Alexandra Fischer, Chris Shaw, East Bay Express, Firehouse, Hangar 18, Lulu, Oakland Museum of California, Political Gridlock, Ron Donovan, Scott Johnson

July 13, 2009 By squirt

Lucky 13 ArtSale2 event Saturday July 18th

lucky 13 card front
Lucky13 ARTSALE2

The Lucky 13 is hosting the ARTSALE2 event this Saturday, July 18th from 3pm until closing.

Featured artists include: Chuck Sperry & Ron Donovan of the Firehouse Kustom Rockart Co, Chris Shaw, Political Gridlock, Dave Hunter, Scott Johnson & LuLu. Screen printed rock posters, plenty of mayhem, and much, much, more! 21 & Over Only, Please.

Lucky 13
1301 Park Street
Alameda, CA
(510) 523-2118

more info

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Lucky 13

June 1, 2008 By Hangar 18

UK Rock Poster Explosion Tour 2008

chucksperry2008ukrockpostertourUK ROCK POSTER EXPLOSION TOUR
June/July 2008

FIREHOUSE KUSTOM ROCKART COMPANY – the prolific rock poster creators (Chuck Sperry and Ron Donovan) from San Francisco, California will be blazing through the UK during the month of June for an incendiary rock art poster tour. The UK has been experiencing an explosion of rock poster art hitting the streets from screen printing studios that seem to be springing up in all sorts of various garages, warehouses and basements. England is currently witnessing a new pedigree of artist — clearly there is something cool happening.

Firehouse will be exhibiting in the following cities:

London (June 11-13)
Manchester (June 14-15)
Sheffield (June 17-18)*
Birmingham (June 19-20)*
Brighton (June 21-22)*
London (June 23-25)
Bristol (July 4-5)

* = workshop/silk screening discussion

Additional info including details regarding hanging our exhibit:
www.myspace.com/ukrockposterexplosiontour

Firehouse at Flatstock 16 (SXSW):
www.youtube.com

=============================

JUNE 11
Notting Hill Arts Club
London

**This is our first UK date so please join us in helping kick the tour off properly by hoisting a few!

=============================

JUNE 13
Offside Bar & Gallery
Islington, London

A Night Of 1968 Inspiration – “Long Hot Summer”
Co-sponsored by Philosophy Football and Red Pepper

Details:

– Art exhibition and visual presentation by The Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company of San Francisco
www.myspace.com/ukrockposterexplosiontour

– Art exhibition by the British Rock Artists Group (BRAG)
www.myspace.com/brag_art

– Headlining will be Tymon Dogg, long-time Clash collaborator who first started as a recording artist in 1968 and was subsequently involved in the W11 squatting movement. A major figure on the protest song circuit. www.myspace.com/tymondoggandthequikening

– Then we have Polarbear, he is one of the top young performance poets around, it’s a major coup to get him. www.myspace.com/polarbearspoken

– DJing we have Scratchy, The Clash’s former Tour DJ. He will do his infamous “Rockin’ the Barricades” set.

– There will also be a 1968 visual intro curated by Simon Green of www.eventful.org.uk

– Poetry from Adrian Mitchell, Roundtable with Hilary Wainwright editor of Red Pepper, Mike Marqusee, John Harris from The Guardian and more!

Advance tickets available at:
www.philosophyfootball.com

or

Red Pepper Magazine:

=============================

JUNE 14-15
Urbis Gallery
Manchester

Co-exhibition with good friends:

Nick Rhodes:
www.myspace.com/switchopen

British Rock Artists Group (BRAG):
www.myspace.com/brag_art

=============================

JUNE 16-17
Archipelago Art Gallery & Studio
Sheffield

– Informal Q&A

=============================

JUNE 18-19
Studio 4 Gallery
Birmingham

– Informal Q&A

=============================

JUNE 20-21
The Basement
Brighton

Co-exhibition & workshop with good friends: British Rock Artists Group (BRAG):

=============================

JUNE 23
Notting Hill Arts Club
London

Details:

– Art exhibition by The Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company of San Francisco
– Music performances by:

LA PLEBE (San Francisco)
HANDSHAKE (London)

**An additional local band or two will be added to the bill as well as a film screening. Also, The Firehouse and BRAG will be making a special donation to Strummerville at this event. Don’t touch that dial!

=============================

JUNE 25*
Inn On The Green
London

=============================

JUNE 28-29
Hyde Park
London

=============================

JULY 4-5
The Croft
Bristol

Co-exhibition with good friends: Jacknife Posters:
www.myspace.com/jacknifeposters

=============================

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: UK

January 7, 2008 By squirt

Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

chucksperry-2008bockThis book release poster was commissioned by Random House at the request of Charles Bock for his debut novel “Beautiful Children,” and will be available on his book release tour of the US.

One Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn’t come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son’s room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy’s father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.

As the Ewings navigate the mystery of what’s become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newell’s vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are “urban nomads,” each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance.

In this masterly debut novel, Charles Bock mixes incandescent prose with devious humor to capture Las Vegas with unprecedented scope and nuance and to provide a glimpse into a microcosm of modern America. Beautiful Children is an odyssey of heartache and redemption – heralding the arrival of a major new writer.

Bock was born and raised in Las Vegas, which served as the setting for Beautiful Children. He comes from a family of pawnbrokers who’ve operated pawn shops in downtown Las Vegas for more than thirty years. On his website, he reflects upon his upbringing as a source of inspiration for the novel:

“Sometimes, when my siblings and I were little, my parents, for various reasons, used to have us stay in the back of the shop. This would be after school or during summer vacation, when there wasn’t summer camp, or they didn’t have anybody to watch over us and we were too small to be alone. We’d occupy our time with sodas from a nearby casino’s gift shop, comic books, and a television that got wavy reception, and we’d do small chores, rolling coins or filing the previous day’s pawn tickets. The store often had a line of people waiting to pawn their goods, local customers who worked in casinos and also spent all their spare time playing blackjack and slot machines, and also tourists who had blown all their cash, and maybe their plane tickets home, and now were desperate, and hung over, and needed loans on their wedding rings, so they could go back into the casinos and win back their money. I’d sometimes stare out of the back of the store and watch the people in line and take in their faces. Lots of times my parents would be put in the position of having to tell these people that their wedding ring was only worth a fraction of what they’d paid for it, or that, say, the diamonds in that ring were brown and flawed. From the back of the store, I’d watch as the customers exploded and called my parents dirty Jews and cursed at them and threatened them at the top of their lungs. It’s impossible in situations like that not to feel for everybody involved – to be horrified, sure, but more than that, to be saddened by the spectacle, to want so much more than that out of life for everyone.”

Bock earned a Master’s of Fine Arts in fiction and literature from Bennington College and has taught fiction at the Gotham Writers Workshop in New York City. His short fiction has been published in Esquire Magazine.

1/23/2008
Happy Endings Reading Series
302 Broome Street (between Forsyth and Eldridge)
New York, NY 10010
8 pm

2/6/2008
Clark County Library
1401 East Flamingo Rd.
Las Vegas, NV 89119
702-507-3459
7 pm

2/12/2008
Three Lives Books
154 W. 10th Street
New York, NY 10014
212-741-2069
7 pm

2/18/2008
Powell’s Books on Hawthorne
3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97214
503-238-1668
7:30 pm

2/19/2008
Elliott Bay Book Co.
101 S. Main Street
Seattle, WA 98104
206-624-6600
7:30 pm

2/20/2008
Booksmith
1644 Haight Street
San Francisco, CA 94117
415-863-8688
7 pm

2/22/2008
Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91101
626-449-5320
7 pm

2/28/2008
Brookline Booksmith
279 Harvard Street
Brookline, MA 02446
617-566-6660
7 pm

Links:
Beautiful Children
Girl with Shaved Head
Random House

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Beautiful Children, Charles Bock

December 20, 2007 By Hangar 18

New Firehouse Kustom Rockart Co. Studio

New Studio
New Studio

Click the amazing panavision photoclicked by Marc Malakie and stitched together by Nick Rhodes. The new Firehouse Kustom Rockart Studio!

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Hangar 18

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • Next Page »

Latest News

  • 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

Topics

  • Art Prints
  • Event Posters
  • Events
  • Movie Posters
  • News
  • Original Art
  • Press & Reviews
  • Rock Posters
  • Site

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…

Archives

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

Band, Venue, Year…

© 2009–2025 Chuck Sperry - All Rights Reserved.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.