Pretty Pictures
The Pemp of All
At times we’ve been accused of featuring works that resembles “middle school art” (shout out to our #1 fan, Joe). In the interest of further perpetuating that opinion, we’ve pulled together a collection of pieces that in fact is exactly that. However, what separates the following work is the context and setting in which it was created.
This collection was discovered at an estate sale in a beautiful brown shingle, single-family Victorian home in San Francisco’s Western Addition. Buried under stacks of old frames and obscured by the accumulated memorabilia of a full life was the collected souvenirs of a youth guidance counselor in the late 60′s and early 70s.
Could this be a portrait of the deceased?
While the imagination of most adolescents centers around puppy love and the music that fuels those throbbing pubescent passions, these children incorporated the cultural iconography of their turbulent environment. From the colorful abstractions of 1970s psychedelia to the vivid depictions of street life and the urban existence, we are able to gaze at the world through the eyes of troubled youth. Take for instance this coarse prose written by Ronald Runner.
Could this be the accompanying illustration of Ronald’s aspirations of manhood and ultimately social standing?
And so, journey with me for a moment back to those awkward adolescent years when you felt like a complete outsider; a time when we all felt as though no one truly understood us. Only this time, picture yourself isolated from your family, surrounded by other misdirected kids, grappling with the changing cultural trade winds of San Francisco in the tail-end of the summer of love.
This piece might just perfectly encapsulate the trials, temptations, and ultimately, confusion of a impressionable child of the 70s. It may take a minute to untangle the hidden layers of words, emotions and pleas, but once apparent we see an unflinching glimpse of the boy Claude Brown once labeled the “manchild.”
Kids these days have it easy.
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Fuck yeah that’s him. (1st picture) Shrinks / Counselors always see themselves in a boat. Lots of times there is a “rocky” water current. Oddly, there is no water. Perhaps this means there is something missing from his own environment? A mate? Very lonesome in that boat by himself isn’t he? I dig his goddamn side burns. (I mean that in a totally str8 way, but yeah, gun to my head, i’d fuck him! LOL!) No seriously, I dig the super 70′s, post partem hippy depression, that drips from these drawings. Not as much “dazed and confused” as it is… this is San Fran in the 70′s, where did the dreaming hippies go, now what the fuck? The answer, of course, was the 80′s Max Headroom, Cocaine driven hedonism that orgasmed in its own disillusionment with the rise of the Aids crisis.
You know what, this is very fucking Americana. It’s an unskilled norman rockwell after he just burned one and left it unfinished in favor of a goddamn fish sandwich. I love it.
last picture (The penis Syringe)
We call Syringes “Rigs” out here in the meth addicted hillbilly hell of the south east. Now, that rig looks like a penis to me. That triangular shape to its left looks like a pair of panties. Perhaps the artist of this little diddy wanted to get high and inject someone both with a rig and his penis. I freud this one for you. This one gets the goddamn Freud award.
The sunshine, jug of moonshine, pot farm is just fucking beautiful. That ten gallon hat is a head. The sun is high. The artist was a happy pot head. The message, simple and clear, and by God if my paranoia wasn’t so out of whack, I’d take up smoking grass again. He look like he drank that shine and smoked one. It makes your head go “whome whome whome” a vibrating sound like you are locked inside the laundry mat dryer of your own stomach just before vomiting. Still, it’s a very tender puke, and being high helps to just get it all out god damn it. Then see, you can be happy. (…and forget for a moment the nagging thought that all this shit is pointless and we are all going to die uneventfully and without contributing very much at all to the history of mankind.) I know, that’s a lot to swallow, but if you hit it up just right and hit that shine just right, you won’t puke and everything will just kind of be o.k. with that A.M. radio whistling out the goddamn Eagles “Peaceful Easy Feeling”
That pot farm, high sunshine, drawing is a “Peaceful Easy Viewing” retro shot in the arm. Makes me want to listen to Bread’s “Everything I Own”. Really…. Happy V-Day guys. I’m going to hit the rest of this Vodka and go to sleep.