Caitlin Dono­hue recently sat down to talk with Moon­al­ice artist Chuck Sperry…

Chuck Sperry hand­ing out posters (photo credit: Nick Cernak)

To Be A Poster Artist Dur­ing Occupy: Chuck Sperry on Psy­che­delic Art, Social Change, and Port Shutdowns

With Occupy’s first anniver­sary sneak­ing up on us, has enough time past since its incep­tion to reflect on its urban encamp­ments and fright­en­ing con­flicts with law enforce­ment in a ratio­nal, rea­son­able man­ner? Maybe ratio­nal is the wrong word — I’m sure many would agree that the movement’s major con­tri­bu­tiont to date was a gen­eral fir­ing up of the 99 per­cent, even of those 99 per­centers who would sooner have rid­den a bike to work than sit in on GA meet­ing in Oscar Grant Plaza. Through leav­ing its agenda unde­fined, Occupy allowed us all to paint our own hopes and dreams for the world onto it like a piece of draw­ing paper.

For some more lit­er­ally than oth­ers. This month, an exhibit opened at Yerba Buena Cen­ter for the Arts that accu­mu­lates the work of 25 Bay Area artists who spun their Occupy dreams into poster form. Chuck Sperry is per­haps one of the most well-known name of the bunch. Sperry’s lived in the Bay since 1989, and recently came home early from a camp­ing trip to answer our ques­tions about his rela­tion­ship with Occupy, the way he dis­trib­uted his “This Is Our City And We Can Shut It Down” prints on the day of the Oak­land port shut­down, and gen­eral “what does art mean” token asks.

SFBG: At what moment did you real­ize that Occupy was an impor­tant event? How did you first hear about it?

CS: Through the begin­ning of 2011, I was cre­at­ing an instal­la­tion for the San Fran­cisco Museum of Mod­ern Art curated by Renee de Cos­sio, with artists Chris Shaw and Ron Dono­van. Each artist would install work in one of three artists’ gallery win­dows on the side of the SFMOMA on Minna Street. The pro­posal for the instal­la­tion was to bring the aes­thetic of San Francisco’s poster tra­di­tions to paint­ing, and to real­ize these in mon­u­men­tal form. I wanted this piece to reflect San Francisco’s poster his­tory begin­ning in the free­dom of speech move­ment through the 1960’s, and to also reflect the psy­che­delic tra­di­tion that gave birth to the rock poster.

While I was work­ing on an 11-foot by nine-foot acrylic paint­ing, I was fol­low­ing the progress of the Arab Spring move­ments, Tahrir Square, and the gath­er­ing Occupy Wall Street move­ment that was spread­ing across Amer­ica. I decided to use my reac­tion to these events as inspi­ra­tion for an icono­graphic paint­ing titled, “Saint Every­one.” I wanted to express the open­ing mind, and spread­ing enlight­ened human­ism, the decen­tral­iza­tion of power — or awak­en­ing sense of peo­ple power — to the piece. I used vibrat­ing, reac­tive col­ors to paint a fig­ure hold­ing an open­ing lotus (sym­bol of enlight­en­ment), against a back­ground of op-art cir­cles, which com­mu­ni­cate decen­tral­iza­tion — that the back­ground has many cen­ters — like the move­ment which has no leaders.

“Saint Every­one” was installed at the SFMOMA in June 2011. So I was get­ting with it by then.

As Occupy Oak­land was form­ing by the fall of 2011, my artist friend Jon-Paul Bail of Polit­i­cal Grid­lock was print­ing his icono­graphic “Hella Occupy Oak­land” posters on Frank Ogawa Plaza (re-named Oscar Grant Plaza) from the point when peo­ple were first gath­er­ing there. When I say print­ing, Jon-Paul Bail was print­ing live, right there, with a table set up in the open, print­ing and hand­ing peo­ple freshly-made posters. In a few short weeks he had printed hun­dreds, if not, thou­sands of posters which were being handed out to peo­ple there. He was joined there on Oscar Grant Plaza by Melanie Cer­vantes and Jesus Bar­raza of Dig­nidad Rebelde, who cre­ated more icono­graphic posters for the Occupy movement.

SFBG: What led to your deci­sion to make art inspired by Occupy? Was it a dif­fer­ent process than your other cre­ative projects?

CS: In Sep­tem­ber I was in an art show, LA VS. WAR, with Bail, Bar­raza, and Cer­vantes, (among oth­ers) and we dis­cussed mak­ing posters for the Novem­ber 2 Occupy action to close the Port of Oak­land. Fel­low artist Chris Shaw — who was involved in the SFMOMA Win­dow Gallery Instal­la­tion — offered to pay for the pro­duc­tion of any Occupy posters through the print­ing account of rock band Moon­al­ice who was in sol­i­dar­ity with Occupy.

I cre­ated “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” I usu­ally work with images and take a lot of time to work my art into a design. In this case, the mes­sage was so over­rid­ing and impor­tant that I felt it was my job as an artist to stay out of the way, and let the words and mes­sage do their job. So in this way it was dif­fer­ent. I used color the­o­ries learned in study­ing the long San Fran­cisco tra­di­tion of psy­che­delic poster art, the use of hot col­ors against cold col­ors to make the words read from a half mile away — haha! I wanted a strong, rad­i­cal mes­sage, used with bold nur­tur­ing col­ors that con­vey a pos­i­tive emo­tion. It would not be a typ­i­cal polit­i­cal poster.

SFBG: How do you want your Occupy poster to be used?

CS: Chris Shaw and I dis­cussed print­ing our posters on heavy paper stock, and print­ing on both sides to dou­ble the expo­sure we could give peo­ple to our mes­sage. You could use this poster as a plac­ard, hold it up over your head. It would make quite an impres­sion and be use­ful to the action. I stood at Oscar Grant Plaza next to the street and passed out nearly 1000 posters in 45 min­utes to the front of the march, so when tele­vi­sion camares picked up the action at the Port of Oak­land, the front of the march was a sea of my poster with the mes­sage, “This Is Our City, And We Can Shut It Down.” No one directed us to make these posters. No one asked. We just did it. And passed them out.

Read the full inter­view by Caitlin Dono­hue at the SFBG Arts & Cul­ture Blog PIXEL VISION

Occupy Bay Area — through Octo­ber 14
Yerba Buena Cen­ter for the Arts
701 Mis­sion, SF
(415) 978-ARTS
www.ybca.org
See pho­tographs of Moon­al­ice Artists Hand­ing Out Occupy Posters

Occupy Posters by Moon­al­ice artists pic­tured below include: Chris Shaw, Alexan­dra Fis­cher, Chuck Sperry, Ron Dono­van, Den­nis Larkins, Car­olyn Fer­ris, & Win­ston Smith.