Four decades • 300+ comix • 250+ books • A Who’s Who of Lowbrow Art

Last Gasp turns 40 this year and to celebrate, we are throwing a party and art show at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.

The Last Gasp 40th Anniversary Art Show assembles a top-drawer lineup of artists – the haut monde of lowbrow. Over the past four decades, Last Gasp has published hundreds of artists in the underground comix, kustom kulture, pop surrealism and street art movements.

Artists in the show include:

Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Glenn Barr, Mark and Vaughn Bode, Robert Crumb, Richard Corben, Rob and Christian Clayton, Guy Colwell, Ron English, Tony Fitzpatrick, Christopher Felver, Camille Rose Garcia, Justin Green, Charles Gatewood, Bill Griffith, Rick Griffin, Ed Hardy, Jay Kinney, Frank Kozik, Joe Ledbetter, Carol Lay, Adrian Lee, Michael Manning, Chris Mars, Mats,  Paul Mavrides, Scott Musgrove, Albert Morse, Junko Mizuno, Liz McGrath, Laurenn McCubbin, Mitch O’Connell, Annie Owens, The Pizz, Mark Ryden, Michael Rosen, Trina Robbins, Spain Rodriguez, Dori Seda, Winston Smith, Stanislav Szukalski, Larry Todd, Eric White, Robert Williams, Basil Wolverton, Attaboy, Aye Jay, and many more to be announced.

Writers, including San Francisco Poet Laureate Diane DiPrima will do a reading.

Design radicals GAMA-GO will produce a limited edition tee shirt for the event.

21 + over; Free and open to the public

When: April 1, 2010, 6pm until late
Where: 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
(415) 974-1719   www.111minnagallery.com   Contact: Jay Howell

About Last Gasp
Last Gasp is one of the largest and oldest publishers and purveyors of underground books & comics in the world, as well as being a distributor of all sorts of weird ‘n’ wonderful subversive literature, graphic novels, tattoo and art books.

Last Gasp was founded in 1970 by Ron Turner. Last Gasp’s first publication, Slow Death Funnies #1 came out on the first “Earth Day,” April 15, 1970. Subsequent comics included the all-women’s comic It Ain’t Me Babe, and Skull Comics. Over the years they have published, and in some cases brought to light, some of the most respected and talented artists working today, including such luminaries as R. Crumb, Mark Ryden, Justin Green, Bill Griffith, Frank Kozik, Todd Schorr, Winston Smith, Spain Rodriguez, and Robert Williams to name but a few.

Ron Turner’s enthusiasm for underground comics, and in particular their autobiographical aspect, has been the driving force behind many groundbreaking publications. Last Gasp published Justin Green’s highly acclaimed confessional Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary in 1972, a book that became an inspiration to many artists now working in the autobiographical style. “Art Spiegelman, who won the only Pulitzer Prize for cartooning, has said he would never have started to do the autobiographical story of his family (in the graphic novel Maus) unless Justin had done it first. And Robert Crumb said the same thing,” said Turner.

Today, Last Gasp publishes 12-20 new titles per year, focusing on Lowbrow and Pop Surrealist artists, as well as graphic novels. The company has 18 full and part-time employees and is based in San Francisco. In addition to publishing, Last Gasp distributes for large and small publishers worldwide, providing a steady countercultural stream of books and other printed matter that spreads over six continents.

Last Gasp books have been glowingly reviewed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Juxtapoz magazine, The Guardian (UK), Hi-Fructose magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Austin Chronicle, American Book Review, and The Los Angeles Times.

Co-publishing partners include La Luz de Jesus / Billy Shire Fine Arts, Porterhouse Fine Art Editions, San Jose Museum of Art, Grand Central Art Center, Smokemuse, JaPress, Moulinsart, Presspop Gallery, Ignition Publishing, NewSkool/Analog, Laguna Art Museum, and many more.

The readers of the San Francisco Bay Guardian named Last Gasp the Best Local Publisher in 2009.

First publications: Slow Death, 1970 (comic); Breather’s Guide to Invisible Air Polution (book) 1970

Gilbert Shelton, underground cartoonist and author of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy’s Cat, Wonder Warthog, and Not Quite Dead, will autograph copies of his work at Oat Willie’s Campaign Headquarters, 617 West 29th Street, Austin, TX, on the afternoon of Friday, March 12, 2010.

No stranger to Austin, Shelton began his art career at the University of Texas Ranger student humor Magazine in the early sixties, where he was a frequent contributor and began the groundbreaking Wonder Warthog comic series.

After graduation Shelton moved around the country searching for creative opportunities, stopping at Cleveland, New York, and back to Austin to attend graduate school. He tried various stints at humor and automotive magazines and a brief stay as Art Director for the Vulcan Gas Company, a psychedelic rock venue in Austin.

Finally, Shelton moved to San Francisco in 1968, hoping to join poster artists Victor Moscoso, Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelly, and Wes Wilson in creating posters for the exploding rock scene there. He and three other Texans pooled their resources, bought a printing press, and formed a company, Rip Off Press, to create, print, and publish rock posters.

But, as Shelton put it in a 2006 interview, “I wasn’t as good (as a poster artist) as these guys, but I discovered I could do comic books. And, we discovered that our printing press wasn’t good enough to print posters, but it was good enough to print comics.” The rest is history.

Over forty years later, Shelton has produced 14 Freak Brothers titles, as well as several collections. They have been translated into so many languages that it is easier to list the exceptions: every language except Chinese, Arabic, Russian, and the African vernaculars. Over thirty million Freak Brothers books have been sold
worldwide.

In addition to the Freak Brothers, Shelton is the author of the companion series Fat Freddy’s Cat, and has coauthored five titles in the series Not Quite Dead , the peripatetic adventures of the “worlds least famous rock band” with French cartoonist Pic. He was also a contributor to the Zap! underground comic series,
numerous fanzines and other publications, and was the creator of the drug dealing board game Feds ‘n Heads.

Old and new friends of the works of Gilbert can see him at the Oat Willie’s autograph party Friday, March 12th, at a show at the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, on March 13th and at a panel discussion at SXSW on Monday, March 15th.

Here’s the invite:

The Cartoon Art Museum proudly presents Spain Rodriguez: Rebel in Ink, a retrospective exhibition celebrating the art of seminal underground comix creator and San Francisco legend Spain Rodriguez.

Rebel in Ink looks back on Rodriguez’s 40-plus years as a comic book artist, providing the most comprehensive gallery exhibition of his work to date. In the late 1960s, Rodriguez was one of the pioneers of the underground comix movement, through work on such groundbreaking publications as The East Village Other, Zap Comix, and the first underground tabloid, Zodiac Mindwarp, which was created by Rodriguez. Trashman, one of Rodriguez’s best known creations, was an icon in underground newspapers of the 1960s and 1970s. Rodriguez was an early pioneer of online comics as well, and he collaborated with the late comics historian and writer Bob Callahan in the 1990s on The Dark Hotel, which was featured on the popular website Salon.com. Rodriguez has also been active as an educator at various Bay Area colleges and schools. Among his more recent works are numerous illustrations for the mainstream press, several anthology comics collections, and the critically acclaimed Che: A Graphic Biography, a 2008 graphic novel depicting the life and times of Che Guevara.

The opening reception for this exhibition will take place on Thursday, September 17, 2009 from 7:00-9:00pm. Spain Rodriguez will look back at his long and storied career in a discussion moderated by Cartoon Art Museum founder Malcolm Whyte. This event is free and open to the public.

Cartoon Art Museum
655 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-CAR-TOON
www.cartoonart.org

Hi Ron,

Thanks for forwarding all these requests about Wilson to people who are interested in visiting him. I just got back from taking him for a long walk & out to Walgreens to buy some glue. (No, he’s not drinking or sniffing it!) But he is on the fourth page for Zap. They are just great…particularly the fourth one I looked at today, which is about half done.

…

he was finally inspired to get down to work. I got him a lamp & stool for his drawing table, which really helped. I took him to the Palace of the Legion of Honor on Tuesday. I try to take him someplace really interesting at least once a week.

…

He’s able to carry on a conversation better these days, staying on topic for much longer than a couple of months ago. But he will never be the same, really. He can’t do simple problem-solving tasks, and cannot recognize something he is looking for when it is right in front of him. So he needs a lot of help.

…

but he is still very much the same old Wilson in many ways, even with his limitations. Some people who visit him only notice how much easier it is to get a word in edgewise and think he’s fine otherwise! (he is famous for having been such a motormouth, but is much quieter these days)  I am actually falling in love with this new version of him all over again….this Gentler Wilson.

And Lorraine says Hustler is going to do a half-page feature on Wilson in an upcoming issue.

S. Clay Wilson Special Needs Trust

PO Box 14854

San Francisco, CA 94114

There’s a link on his site to make a PayPal donation, if you prefer.

Wilson Thread #1

Wilson Thread #2

Visiting an ICU is always a grim adventure. The ward is full of hope and folks hanging by one fingernail to our world. Wilson was napping and his hospital bed was inflating and deflating in a slow silent wave under him, keeping bed sores at bay. He had been cleaned up and was breathing quite well on his own. A brace on his ankle was switched daily to make sure his tendon did not deteriorate from lack of use and give him a drop-foot condition.

He seemed peaceful napping. Lorraine and I began to say hello to him and he woke slowly, and batted open his eyes. The tube was now out of his head and the head had returned to almost normal size. A few scabs on his head and a two-week beard growth were all that seemed different about Steve.

We started giving him news and greetings from his friends. He turned his head to where Lorraine was standing and then back to me when I talked. I told him a bad joke and he responded not unlike most people I tell bad jokes to. He didn’t change expression. He was able to cough a bit, and moved his legs several times. The oxygen absorption was at 100%. This was remarkable, I thought. I touched his arm and told him that when he got better we would get him out of there. He responded with a facial expression that seemed to say: “what’s stopping you.” Paul Mavrides saw him today and confirmed that his attentiveness was much greater and that he was improved from last week.

Wilson is not out of the woods by a long shot. Recovery will be a long time, but breathing on his own is a big step. He is able to hear people and some response is clear. They will have to move him soon and perhaps he can get into a facility like Laguna Honda which took care of Gary Arlington for a year and a half. Gary is now living by himself down by the ball park.

I came to say goodbye to Wilson, but said see you later instead.

- Ron Turner