Richard’s Art Show, Episode 2

In which a variety of old images are shown.

Newsprint colored neon. Dazzling. Subtle. Sophisticated. Hard to draw.

This article is not about “East Bay Eats”. I never liked that phrase to begin with.

Continuing to go through my old portfolios, here’s another set of images from my late ’70s graphics work for the KPFA Folio. Below is how it looked on the page of restaurant advertisements. I think this banner got used for a few issues, but I was underwhelmed with its effect. Note, please, the general chaos of the page over which it attempted to generate calm and stability. I rest my case.

As I look at the work I did now, 43 years later, I want to put my arm around this Brandy fellow, and tell him his work is going to hold up on its own merits.

Nabalom Bakery is the sole remaining business. It had been open for a year when this was printed.

I’d be at the radio station, hanging around the Folio department (a physical space and a social dynamic that deserves a real telling sometime, by somebody) and hear about the need for a graphic. Then I’d ride my bike back to my room in whichever communal house I lived, and get started on it. I usually had a week or more to complete the job, especially for the more elaborate drawings.

I was driving a delivery truck for an office supply company, ALKO, which was located just a few doors down from the KPFA studios on Shattuck Avenue. Well, not really a truck, at first. A Chevy Vega station wagon, on which I learned to drive a stick. The ones that would blow up in collisions. Later they got a Toyota pickup truck, also a manual. I got very good at shifting while I delivered office supplies to business in Emeryville and offices at UC Berkeley. And at night, I’d set myself up at my drawing board with caffeine and weed and pipe tobacco and get down to my real work. Like, how to render a vampire who’s being interviewed.

Describing where the bites go. I had no idea what the book was about.

This was at the very beginning of all that vampire interview stuff. I still haven’t read those books, or seen the movies. I just now looked them up; turns out people love them. Go figure. Anyway, here’s the graphic that was used in a couple of page situations. As I look at the pages the illustrations were placed on, I’m reminded of how motivated I was to make them as smart and visually rewarding as they could be. I was young, learning a craft, and firing on all cylinders. I had good eyesight, decent rooms to stay up late in, and a developing identity as an artist in a community that mattered to me. Not the vampire community. But late ’70s Berkeley, and KPFA.

I was quite proud to be contributing to this culture. Look at what was on the air.

Late ’70s stylistic competition was weird and fierce. The Hallowe’en image was also mine.

Let’s just say I had a tendency for more detail than was strictly necessary.

Odd to be putting these images up in this way. Hard to assume anyone would care, at this late date. And I’m not sure about this Medium platform, yet, but that could just be my ambition impairment getting in the way of my obviously deep-seated passion for being a Content Creator and Thought Leader. Though I’ve been looking around; most of articles I read are comprised of an obvious stock image, a striving headline about a specious premise, paragraphs of two sentences max, and a quick, glib conclusion. I hope this is different from that.