Chuck Sperry

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January 6, 2011 By squirt

Widespread Panic “Winter” Variant Editions

Widespread Panic “Winter”

Speckled Frost Edition

22 x 33

Edition of 25

7 color silkscreen (metallics, glazes and rich hand-mixed colors)

Printed on Speckled Frost Paper

SOLD OUT – Thank You!

Widespread Panic “Winter”

White Marble Parchment Edition

22 x 33

Edition of 23

7 color silkscreen (metallics, glazes and rich hand-mixed colors)

Printed on White Marble Parchment

SOLD OUT – Thank You!

Widespread Panic “Winter”

Snowflake Edition

22 x 33

Edition of 9

7 color silkscreen (metallics, glazes and rich hand-mixed colors)

Printed on Snowflake Patterned Paper

SOLD OUT – Thank You!

Widespread Panic “Winter”

Mirror Foil Edition

22 x 33

Edition of 12

7 color silkscreen (metallics, glazes and rich hand-mixed colors)

Printed on Mirror Foil

SOLD OUT – Thank You!

I’ll be making a very limited release of the variant editions on Sunday, January 9, 2011 at a random time.

——————————————————-

A portion of the sale of the Widespread Panic variant editions will go to help my dear friend Charles Bock and family.

You may remember, I designed the cover of his novel “Beautiful Children.” Check out the book cover design and the poster here.

I’ll quote Charles McGrath about Charles and his situation from the New York Times: “The writer Charles Bock made a great many literary friendships during the years while he struggled to complete his first novel, “Beautiful Children.” When Mr. Bock’s wife, Diana Colbert, was discovered to have leukemia and underwent a bone marrow transplant in the fall of 2009, many of those friends pitched in to offer household help. In October, Ms. Colbert’s leukemia returned (she is scheduled for another transplant next month), and three of the Bocks’ friends, the novelists Fiona Maazel and Mary-Beth Hughes and the writer Leigh Newman, decided they needed to help even more. “We said everything that can be done, should be done,” Ms. Maazel recalled. So on Feb. 6th, at P.S. 122 in the East Village, the Bock friends are throwing what they’re calling “the most literary rent party ever.” Full article

Article in The New Yorker

Here’s a link to donate to Charles Bock and his family.


Filed Under: Rock Posters Tagged With: Beautiful Children, Charles Bock, Widespread Panic

September 22, 2010 By squirt

Faya Gallery – 211 Elizabeth – Closing Party – Friday, September 24, 2010

The show at Faya Gallery, 211 Elizabeth Street in New York City was a total blast. The show is still up until September 26, and there’s a closing party on Friday, September 24 from 6 pm to 10 pm. Chris and I will not be able to attend, but it’s sure to be a great time! I was very happy to be back on the Lower East Side for the opening. The Faya Gallery’s location is beautiful, in North Little Italy, and the hospitality of gallery owner John Scalise and his partner Rob and friend Cervantes was great. Here’s a cool picture of John and Cervantes:

Chris Shaw showed his new paintings and they are gorgeous. I love his canvases; I’m a proud owner of some of his paintings. Chris is just a top-notch painter, and fun guy to hang out with. Take a look at his beautiful canvases here:

Carlo McCormick – Senior Editor of “Paper” – showed up at the opening and introduced me to Hubert Kertzschmar the album art designer of Rolling Stones’ “Some Girls”. The above photo is courtesy Carlo McCormick (with Hubert’s camera).

Novelist Charles Bock came to the opening and we caught a coffee together (next day) near his writing office on Union Square, NYC. It was really great to catch up with Charles and share the last year of experiences with him. I designed the cover for the paperback edition of his novel “Beautiful Children.”

I had a great time with Seth Tobocman, editor of World War 3 Illustrated magazine. Seth and I worked as co-editors in the 1980’s on World War 3. The magazine is still going strong after 25 years. And I contribute to this day. There will be a retrospective of WW3 in which I’m included at EXIT Art Gallery in NYC early next year.

On our free day Chris and I rolled around New York City. I was a little tired – with the Dylan release just before my trip – and it’s kind of hard to get sleep when your head is hanging over the traffic…

…And there’s an incredible rat problem downtown.

Chris and I had a great time together. The show was a big success! We spent part of our free day by going to this great paint pigment store on the Lower East Side – to pick up raw / mixable paint pigments for our paintings and prints. Dropped some serious cash on metallic and opalescent pigments that will mirror the metallic effects of my printing in acrylic paint for the canvases and to print with. I used to live across the street from this store and it was a pleasure to be back in the hood. Thanks to John Scalise and everyone at Faya Gallery!

Filed Under: Events Tagged With: Beautiful Children, Charles Bock, Chris Shaw, Exit Art Gallery, Faya Gallery, Hubert Kertzschmar, John Scalise, Seth Tobocman

August 23, 2009 By squirt

Gaining Perspective: A Desert Trip

pinkindistance

This coming September will mark the first year of the Firehouse-Goldenvoice Poster Series; it looks like the Firehouse Kustom Rockart Company will reach 60 posters by then! (I’ll post a full breakdown on the first year of The Firehouse Goldenvoice Series in September.)

If you break that down, it’s more than one poster a week. That’s just for Goldenvoice shows at The Warfield and Regency Theaters in San Francisco.

Also this year there were two large editions of Eric Clapton posters to add to Firehouse’s Eric Clapton Series.

Add to that designs I make for other events (that I print too), designs for books, illustrations and comics, and I won’t leave out movie posters, like American Artifact; you’re talking about a lot of work!

It’s been a spectacular year. But where does that fit into The Grand Scheme of Things…

… After all that it was time to bug out for the open desert and gain a little perspective (see – that’s me – below).

pinkmeditationmeindistance

So my girlfriend Nancy and I headed out for a week-long roadtrip to the American Southwest. The idea was to take the road-less-travelled, keep to the two-lane roads and see some big wide open desert. Destination: Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Southwest Utah with an excursion to Antelope Canyon in North Central Arizona in the Navajo Nation where we would take a Navajo Guided tour of the canyon.

First day, we stopped in Gold Country 4 hours east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where we stayed in Sonora, California at the Sonora Inn. The Sonora Inn was built at the main intersection of Sonora in the 1890’s by Italian entrepreneurs, and boasts the oldest elevator in California, which Nancy and I rode because we’re thrill-seekers. We dropped our bags and ate at the Diamondback Grill, which was so good we ate there on the way back too! The Sonora Inn also has a brilliant second-story pool with a beautiful view of Sonora’s old city center.

sonorainn

Second day, headed out of Sonora to go to Yosemite. On the way, we stopped in Groveland, California where Chris Shaw, the brilliant Fillmore poster artist, has painted the whole downtown – he’s decorated the entire outside of the Iron Door the Oldest Saloon in California – the trading post, general store, ice cream shop, and on and on. It’s like Chris Shaw World, and I love Chris’ work!, so we stopped and took a lot of pictures. Here’s some Wild West Chris Shaw work:

grovelandshaw3

grovelandshaw2grovelandshaw1

Yosemite was packed with people. We found a few private spots to stop and wade in the Merced River. We left pretty quick, but snapped this on the way out.

deerskickassyosemite

Picked up speed as we headed out over the Nevada desert to Tonopah, Nevada …

speed

… where we climbed over the fence of the Mining Museum at midnight, and star gazed.

Tonopah Test Range is just to the south of the city and lord knows what goes on in there.

But here’s a few shots of the area.

tonopahtestrangetonopahstealth

Also Nancy and I started to collect sage and cedar from the desert which makes for some excellent incense and has a purifying scent!

amtonopahsage

Stopped in Rachel, Nevada at The Little A’Le’Inn on the edge of the Nellis Military Reserve, gateway to infamous Area 51. Ordered a coffee and an excellent homemade apple pie made by the owners of the A’Le’Inn, Pat and Connie; the pie was delish!

alienpie

Nancy and I met Pat and her husband 14 years ago, when we went out to Area 51, and camped in the adjacent Tickapoo Valley and hiked to the frontier of Area 51 to see the “non-existent” base.  Nancy and I later wrote an article for San Francisco’s Filth Magazine about the secret base where it was rumored there were tests of incredibly advanced alien technology. We scooped Larry King, who arrived the day we left, to do one of the first ever network television reports on Area 51. At any rate, we had a great two-and-a-half hour visit with Connie (Pat’s daughter), Connie’s son, and a new resident to Rachel, Kurt, who told us a lot of great stories, including one story, where, he said, he has seen several drone-like crafts flying out of Area 51 at supersonic speed and negotiating right angled turns without slowing down. Nancy and I snapped this shot at the Black Mail box which marks the personnel entrance, a 50 mile long “dirt super-highway,” to Area 51.

meblackmailbox1 nancyblackmailbox

Stopped for gas in Caliente, Nevada – temperature 112 degrees – and snapped a quickie.

swallowsdrugsbest

Made it to Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Utah by 3:30pm: to set up camp and take a hike into the pink sand dunes and make sand angels.

pinksandstent

pinksage

pinkangels

The night sky here was absolutely pitch black and amazing! The Milky Way was very clear and distinct, because this region of the United States has the very least light pollution in the whole country. Bottle of California wine and lots of shooting stars. Heaven.

zionroad

Drove to Zion National Park the next day where even the road is pink, and Nancy dressed to match. We hiked down a dry riverbed. We stopped after for some delicious bumbleberry pie. Don’t ask, it’s just good.

nancymeditatesinzion

bumbleberrypie

That day, I had managed to get up at dawn at Coral Pink Sand Dunes and made a tolerably good pot of strong coffee with my rocket-fuel brewer from home.

So I was revved to drive to Hurricane, Utah where we checked in at noon at the Motel 6 which had an excellent pool, and only three other guests in the whole place.

We swam in the 120 degree heat, and after I called ahead to Page, Arizona in the Navajo Nation to reserve a spot on the Antelope Canyon Tour we planned to take the next day. Then Nancy and I took in “District 9” at the Hurricane movie theater. Next day we bee-lined to Page to meet our Navajo Guide, Tyra, who was a really cool Arizona State University student working her way through school with a bitchin’ summer job, a great sense of humor and a steady grip on the wheel.

Tyra drove us out to Upper Antelope Canyon in one of these jalopies while we sat in back catching air about once every 30 seconds.

antelopetruck

We drove 20 minutes up a dry river bed to the entrance of Antelope Canyon, which has been formed over millenia by rushing washouts that flood through the sandstone there. It’s under Navajo Tribal protection because it’s holy ground. The atmosphere inside is indescribable. Here’s some pictures (Tyra took some of these – there I told you I’d credit you Tyra!):

The entrance and inside

nancyentranceantelopemeinantelope

Navajo Tears

navajotears

The Bear

antelopebear

Many thanks to Antelope Canyon Tours for a great memory, your open hearts and for the lovely white sage smudge stick which will remind me of you and the great time you showed me.

seriousmeatantelope

We drove to Las Vegas, home of Charles Bock author of Beautiful Children (which I did the cover for), and all the beautiful children were rompin’ that evening! All I remember is winning about $500, and getting out early in the morning. Vegas, we’ll be back! This trip was about the great outdoors, sorry. Love ya, Vegas, babe.

Back to California, over Hwy. 108 and some of the most rugged terrain in all of the Western US. Even bumped into some Federales; seems the US Marines are doing some training for the next wave of the War in Afghanistan. ‘Nuff said. US 108, the road is rough, weaving, windy, without guardrails, and narrows in several places to one lane, so you gotta love that! My little Toyota Yaris had “had it” by the time we rolled back down into Sonora by dusk. It was dinner time, the Diamondback Grill has the one of the best caramel apple pies west of the Mississippi, a big selection of wine, and – what-the-hey, the Sonora Inn has a great big cool swimming pool. We stayed another night, ate, swam and headed back home to San Francisco in the morning.

Ready for the next batch of posters? YES!

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Antelope Canyon, Beautiful Children, Chris Shaw, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Diamondback Grill, Eric Clapton, Goldenvoice, Iron Door Saloon, Little A'Le'Inn, Regency, Sonora Inn, The Grand Scheme of Things, The Warfield

February 10, 2008 By squirt

“Engineering A Bestseller” New York Post on Chuck Sperry / Charles Bock Collaboration

New York Post • February 10, 2008 • by Karen Holt

Filed Under: Press & Reviews Tagged With: Beautiful Children, Charles Bock, Chuck Sperry, New York Post

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

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Online Release with EQL
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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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