Chuck Sperry "Heaven of Many a Tangled Hue" Spoke Art Gallery SF

It was great to have Spoke Art Gallery over to my studio while I was preparing for my solo exhibition “Heaven of Many a Tangled Hue” at their San Francisco gallery. More info on opening night – including line up and limit information – can be found here. RSVP for the opening night reception on our event page here.

Chuck Sperry
“Heaven of Many a Tangled Hue”
Spoke Art San Francisco
816 Sutter Street
April 7 – 28, 2018

Chuck Sperry’s screen printed panels burst with energy and color, executed with a refinement of technique gained from 25 years producing his own prints. Dripping with brightly colored flowers, decked in gold and silver textures, Sperry’s blue-silver muses sing a paean to the long tradition of humanism reactivated in the struggle for social progress, universal human rights, a more perfect democracy and the utopian ideals of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood where Sperry has made his home since 1989.

The show title and work included draw inspiration from P. B. Shelley’s poem “The Sensitive Plant” — a meditation on the permanence of beauty and the impermanence of life. Shelley’s poem is set in a verdant garden of flowers representing pagan spirits tended by a maiden Venus:

I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

Chuck Sperry came to pre-eminence in the rock poster genre in the late-90’s, and has largely defined the genre in each decade since with his distinctive style and masterful printing technique.