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Jerry Garcia Edition- A Celebration of Bicycle Day 2021
Available on Bicycle Day, Monday April 19th
18" X 18"
8/C silkscreen with specialty inks
Limited edition of 500
Artist signed & numbered
Printed at Monolith Press in Oakland, CA
Limit one per customer
Every year on April 19th, The Jerry Garcia Estate commissions a new artist to create their annual Bicycle Day Print, celebrating the culture-changing lives of Jerry Garcia and Albert Hofmann, both of whom pioneered and paved the psychedelic landscape for generations to come.
This year they called me.
As it turns out, I was invited to create an official silkscreen portrait of the legendary Jerry Garcia, working from an iconic and historic photo taken by the illustrious Herb Green – while also celebrating the accidental discovery of LSD by experimental Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann.
Let's just say they didn’t have to ask twice.
I wanted to honor Herb’s timeless image, by bringing attention to Jerry’s kind and loving eyes. I tried to capture what I perceived as a delicate balance between his shyness in the spotlight and a calm wisdom in his gaze. His hair is a vortex of energy and motion and music, and there’s a playful jest in his smile. In the brim of his hat, we see some Bicycle Day Blotter and a couple of pins representing the youth culture of the 1960s.
Meanwhile, two decades earlier and across the Atlantic Ocean, on an otherwise ordinary April day in 1943, a Swiss scientist named Albert accidentally discovered the effects of LSD on the human mind. He subsequently increased his dose, becoming at once both researcher and guinea pig. His initial reaction was laden with bouts of anxiety and paranoid delusions, suspecting his neighbor to be diabolical witch, but soon his fear dissolved, only to be replaced by a sheer sense of awe and wonder.
Of the experience, Hofmann said, “… Little by little I could begin to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted behind my closed eyes. Kaleidoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and then closing themselves in circles and spirals, exploding in colored fountains, rearranging and hybridizing themselves in constant flux.”
The main edition serigraph is 8 colors with a run of 500. Beautifully printed by Monolith Press, It changes in different lights. They will be available through Garcia Family Provisions on 4/19 - There will be a small artist edition release sometime in the future at Zoltron.com. With a mix of transparent glazes and patterns and textures and overlays and by printing the main edition on a coated parchment, the inks would rest on the surface, creating depth and texture - something tangible and tactile in a digital age.
Plus it’s a big 18” square and it looks like a sheet of acid. I hope you guys enjoy looking at it as much as I enjoyed taking it making it.
xox
Z
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Celebrating our 3rd Anniversary, Haight Street Art Center is proud and pleased to announce 2020, an eclectic online exhibition of works from 13 members of the HSAC family. Posters, Drawings, Tests and Treasures…
Here's a look at some stuff I contributed to the 2020 show
Sue Nami 2020: Armageddon Outta Here
