Chuck Sperry

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Primus Santa Barbara Poster

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!

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Amon Tobin at The Warfield Poster

 

Amon Tobin, Eskmo at The Warfield, October 1 & 2, 2011

Firehouse Goldenvoice Poster Series No. 143

20 x 26

Edition of 125

4 colors (with very heavy silver metallic) on black paper

Signed and Numbered

Sold Out – Thank You!

 

Here’s a video about Amon Tobin’s show production “Isam Live”:

And here’s a live clip of the show:

Here’s a photograph of the actual poster (see below). Digital jpeg shown above.

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Widespread Panic – 25th Anniversary – Fall Tour 2011 Poster

Widespread Panic invited me to make their 25th Anniversary Tour Fall Tour 2011 poster; the band needed an edition of 2000 to cover over 30 dates. I thought of Geraldine and The Honey Bee. Widespread Panic is like the life-giving flower and the fans stop to listen and feed from the beautiful experience. The concept was set, but making 2000? It seemed a tall order. The band was a bit apologetic, but there were those 30 dates, and the Spring tour poster sold out quite fast. So we thought let’s just give it a try.

In doing so many posters – I didn’t want to compromise: I didn’t want to plate sign these – so I hand signed and numbered each one. I didn’t want to use fewer colors. I wanted to continue to experiment with cool inks. I designed this in 7 colors on archival cream paper. Gold and silver metallics underlay the design with shimmering goodness (four and a half gallons of silver and two gallons of gold to complete 2000 posters). Four tinting colors fill in the spectrum. The last color (printed over the black) is a special mix of opalescent, pearlescent and interference blue on the translucent wings. So I’ve been as busy as a bee this last month, and the Firehouse was a hive of activity.

Widespread Panic 25th Anniversary Fall Tour 2011

16 x 29

Edition of 2000

7 color silkscreen (metallics, glazes and translucent tinting colors)

Printed on archival cream paper

Signed and Numbered

Poster will be made available by Widespread Panic during their tour.

I will be making a very limited release of Artist Proofs and variants after the tour.

Geraldine, chrysanthemine
Prettiest little flower that I ever seen
She’s a friend of mine, she’s a friend of mine.
Petal child, growin’ wild and
Even though she’s livin’ in a compost pile
She’s my glitter and my gold
She’s my glitter and my gold

Whoa Geraldine, have you forgotten?
Baby I have come for your sweet pollen.

I can’t wait to pollenate
Come on pretty baby let’s celebrate
Warm and livin’
The takin’ and a-givin’
Whoa … my my my

Love you high, sting you low
Buzzin’ everywhere that you let me go
Go my way, mama let me go my way.

Whoa Geraldine, have you forgotten?
Baby I have come for your sweet pollen.

I might go gray, I might go blind
I’m never goin’ back to that honeysuckle vine
Long as your alive, I’ll buzz around your hive.

Geraldine, chrysanthemine
Prettiest little flower that I’ve ever seen.
She’s my honeydew baby
Honey do me again
Oh-ho

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Ben Harper at The Warfield Poster Release

Ben loved the poster! He’s a way generous dude, gave me a lot of time, a very warm meeting at The Warfield. Artist Alex Fischer took this photo:

At one point I mentioned that I do a lot of art shows with Winston Smith who did Mr. Harper’s Relentless7 record cover, and Ben whips out his cell phone and said, “Oh yeah, man, I should text Winston, thanks for reminding me!” Very thoughtful. The show was outstanding! Here’s a snip where Ben Harper is singing it, live, no microphone (vid is mismarked 2010):


Ben Harper, Jenny O. at The Warfield, August 25, 2011

Firehouse Goldenvoice Poster Series No. 140

26 x 20

Edition of 275

3 colors (with very heavy silver metallic) on black paper

Signed and Numbered

SOLD OUT – Thank You!

 

 

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Public Enemy at The Regency by Chris Shaw

It was a sincere pleasure to work with Chris Shaw on this poster designed for Public Enemy at The Regency – and hella fun to go and see the show together – WORD! Here’s Chris:

“I was thrilled when Chuck Sperry asked me if I wanted to do a Pub­lic Enemy poster for his Gold­en­voice series, I’m a huge Pub­lic Enemy fan from way back when. Doing a poster for a band you love isn’t always as great as it sounds, some­times you can get hung up on try­ing to get a per­fect image and idea and over­work the art. Try­ing not to over-think things, I decided to go with an old-school polit­i­cal poster, the kind of thing I was mak­ing in the 80’s when I lis­tened to P.E. con­stantly. I’ve made a ton of art over the years lis­ten­ing to that band, and felt like going back to my roots.

Some­how I think I’ve wanted to make this poster for a long time. The last time I made a Pub­lic Enemy poster it was for the Fill­more, I don’t think a riot cop with a bloody baton would have passed pre-screening over there. In par­tic­u­lar, I decided to make this poster a BART cop. BART is a Bay Area tran­sit agency who’s police force has been involved in some very ques­tion­able shoot­ings, have been han­dling them­selves pretty badly, they’ve been in the news a lot. Know­ing the band, the image seemed fit­ting, and timely.

The image is a col­lage of pieces from dif­fer­ent riot cop pho­tos, put together to make an espe­cially sin­is­ter fig­ure. I altered a lot of the small details along the way then sep­a­rated the art into 3 col­ors, stan­dard “pol­i­tics” black & red, plus a bright sil­ver… the sil­ver gives it that rock poster feel. For the vari­ants, we printed a pure cyan instead of the black plate, and used some dif­fer­ent stock. A big thanks Chuck for being the mas­ter of his press, this was an espe­cially clean run of posters.”

Chris will have these posters and vari­ant edi­tions drop­ping at a ran­dom time on his web­site this Fri­day, August 26, 2011. Full poster details, loads of photos and documentation, at chrisshawstudio.com

 

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