A Little SF to Feed My Soul

It’s been a while since I’ve posted Something Fun to Do (see here &/or here).  This more than qualifies.  Several weeks ago, a New Zealander friend in town who is married to an Italian DJ, who are both friends with a San Francisco artist, said this psychedelic rock poster guy was doing a show in Tellaro.  It would be his work inside an ancient church and a light show by the totally tripped-out Bill Ham on the outside after dark.  We went.  It was groovy.  Chuck Sperry’s stuff is amazing.  So, yeah, that was fun & different & not what we usually get around here.

But that wasn’t the most fun part.  Sperry also put on a free silk screening workshop right down the street in La Spezia!  He was awesome.  Besides doing gorgeous, mind-bending work, the man knows his own story and can tell it while he’s going about the business of showing how it’s all done.  And having it look so doable that anyone could set up shop in their kitchen and make good art.  It is not that easy. . . but it is tempting.  Starting with something really simple could get a person hooked.  It’s totally scaleable, as businessy advertisements tout of their softwareish products, but so much more beautiful and fun.

For the workshop, he brought the transparencies from which the silk screens had been made, the framed screens, the paint, the squeegee, and a stack of delicious thick paper.  And away we went!  For the first color, red, he let anyone who wanted to take a pass.  I jumped first.  And didn’t press hard enough.  As someone who sews, it was difficult knowing there was a piece of silk under there as I leant over and scraped across it.  But failing to squish the paint through evenly, leaving white space, made mine unique!  Chuck whipped through the next two passes, the gold and the black.  When they were all hanging and dry, someone else tried to choose mine because, he said, “This one is the best because it is different.”  I thanked him for that, then claimed it as my own.  I kinda love it.  I also dig, perversely, owning a signed piece of art which the artist himself would never let out of studio and that because I got to be part of the process.