April Fools at the Last Gasp
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around-town/events/The-Art-Worlds-Last-Gasp-89306257.html
By JOE ROSATO JR.
Mar 29, 2010
Ron Turner lumbered past shelves of books climbing on all sides to
the ceiling. Looking something like a hippy version of Santa, he
paused to check the day's orders before plopping down in a desk
cluttered with a strange cacophony of books and artifacts.
The founder of one of the world's largest, and last alternative art
publishing houses rattled off a few phone calls then checked his
Facebook account. Everywhere, the walls of his legendary Last Gasp
publishing house were emblazoned with the vintage sideshow posters he
came to appreciate as a child.
"I remember when the circus would come to town in Fresno where I grew
up," Turner said. "The best place for me was the sideshow with the freaks."
It's only natural Turner would spin a career from his affinity for
outsiders and freaks. Last Gasp's artist roster is a who's who of
underground artists like R. Crumb, Justin Green and Robert Williams.
Turner's love of the subversive is as enormous as his passion for the
beautiful, the freaky the stick-it-to-the-man kind of art.
"There's still boxes of cornflakes out there running everything,"said
Turner, simultaneously describing the political and corporate worlds.
"So I don't mind thumbing my nose at them."
This artful nose thumbing got its start back in the sixties, when
Turner was a Bay Area college student studying ecology. The ecology
program was struggling for funds, and Turner and a few friends
figured they could raise money by creating and selling an underground
comic book.
"We thought underground comics were the strongest visual, vehicle for
ideas at the time," Turner said.
Turner's first foray into the art world was a comic called Slow Death
Funnies, featuring works by a number of burgeoning artists like R.
Crumb. Turner and his friends came up with a batch of names for their
new comic. Last Gasp was leftover, so he commandeered it as the name
of his new company.
"The big themes of course were sex drugs and rock and roll," said
Turner. "We provided some more educational material and propaganda."
For forty years, Last Gasp has etched a deep history publishing art
imbrued with the dissonance and elegance of a counter cultural art
world. It's also slipped the occasional educational title into the
mix, with lessons on how to treat herpes, or confronting racism.
Turner has never outgrown the hippy ideals of his youth when he would
protest the war-du-jour or the treatment of farm workers. Each
Christmas he throws a party in Last Gasp's offices, with the proceeds
going to charity.
"Somehow he's kept these things together through the decades," said
San Francisco underground cartoonist, Spain Rodriguez. "Crazy guy that he is."
Rodriguez said Turner and Last Gasp have not only boosted the
popularity of underground comics and art, they've also created a
venue for underground artists to make a living.
"It's been key to the production of underground comics and just
providing some forum way that comics can get out there," Rodriguez said.
Turner doesn't just publish the unusual art he loves, he also
surrounds himself with it. He unbolted a padlocked iron door in the
rear of Last Gasp's headquarters in San Francisco's South of Market..
The door came from Alcatraz, he explains. Every inch of the room is
covered with stuff R. Crumb's original comics for the Slow Death
Funnies, a life size Bruce Lee statue in full karate pose, two
vintage pinball machines -- a stuffed two-headed calf's head.
The collection speaks to Turner's love of outsiders. He rifles
through a collection of clown paintings made by in prison by mass
murderer John Wayne Gacy. But for all his love of the strange, the
unusual, the misfit castoffs --- Turner's philosophies sound
strikingly new-agey.
"Some of us have more extraordinary things to deal with than others,"
he said. "Some of us have more talent than others and if we would all
appreciate it -- the world would be a better place"
--
Note: Last Gasp will hold its 40th anniversary party at 111 Minna in
San Francisco on April 1st at 6 p.m.
--------
Last Gasp marks 40 years
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/26/DDDA1CHVPL.DTL
Meredith May, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Just past the fun house mirrors, through a jail cell door, next to a
collection of sideshow circus murals ("Frog Boy! The Girl Without a
Head!"), San Francisco's patron saint of the counterculture, Ron
Turner, is sorting through boxes and boxes of lowbrow art.
Forty years ago, he created Last Gasp, now one of the world's largest
and oldest publishers of underground comics and graphic novels. He's
getting ready for an April Fool's Day show dedicated to the long list
of artists he put on the pop culture map: those whose canvases are
the comic strip, the tattoo, the blank city wall, the pinup calendar
and the hot rod.
At Last Gasp's 16,000-square-foot Potrero Hill warehouse, Turner is
in his "gallery" - a homemade museum of oddities that includes a
life-size statue of Bruce Lee, a Wurlitzer, pinball machines,
taxidermy displays and a human brain in a jar. He's looking for gems
to tell Last Gasp's 40-year tale.
"Ah, how about this moon over Miami?" Turner asks an assistant,
holding aloft a baking-sheet-size black-and-white photo of himself
mooning the camera. "No? Too much?"
At 69, Turner still has his impish grin - part Santa Claus, part Jerry Garcia.
Now distributing 14,000 titles a year, Last Gasp has grown into a $3
million lit house, publishing works by such cultural notables as R.
Crumb, Justin Green, Ed Hardy and Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman.
A dozen new titles are in the pipeline for fall, including books on
the pop surrealist painter Mark Ryden, as well as car customizer
George Barris, who designed the Batmobile and the Munsters' Koach and
tricked out rides for Elvis, the Beach Boys and Sonny & Cher.
For Turner, steering Last Gasp into cultural history has been one
fascinating road trip.
A perennial socializer, Turner is cruising down memory lane -
remembering everyone's name and drink from the party pictures he
never threw away.
It was at one of these parties in Berkeley in the late '60s that
Turner, a graduate student of experimental psychology at San
Francisco State University, first got his hands on an adults-only Zap
Comix. Enthralled, he enlisted R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton to draw
for his own comic, Slow Death Funnies, intended as a fundraiser for
the Ecology Center on the original Earth Day in 1970.
But the Ecology Center wanted only 10 copies, not the 20,000 Turner
had printed. Undaunted, he took Slow Death Funnies to campuses,
comic-book stores and head shops, thus learning to build his
publishing house on the power of personal touch.
To this day, he makes weekly Last Gasp book deliveries to independent
bookstores, art shops and sex stores in his blue Chrysler Town &
Country minivan. Two hip surgeries have earned him a disabled-parking
placard, but he still hefts the boxes himself.
"One of his great passions is meeting people and learning their
stories," said his son Colin, 32, who serves as Last Gasp's associate
publisher. "You won't see him in the office much before 11 a.m. He
likes to go out. That guy puts me to shame."
A regular haunt is Sketch Tuesdays at 111 Minna Gallery, where 20
invited artists draw near the bar, then post their works on the wall
with their asking price - usually $5 to $30 or a couple of beers.
Glass of Champagne in hand, Turner is in his natural habitat at
Sketch Tuesday. He works the room, making sure he peers into the
sketchbooks of not only the featured artists but also the rogues who
have taken couch seats at the edge of the action.
"You gotta get out here to the eddies - that's where the unexpected
stuff is," Turner shouted over the ultra-loud DJ, looking at the
nudes one woman was drawing in a far corner.
At the wall of art, Turner was stopped by a drawing of a small boy at
the dinner table, about to cut into his eyeball that had oozed out of
its socket onto his plate.
"That's funny! It's like an Ernie Bushmiller - who did Nancy and
Sluggo - it's all nice and innocent and then you have this bizarre
thing going on," Turner said.
It was drawn by Mats!? Stromberg of Oakland, who credits Turner with
helping him make a career out of subversive cartooning.
"He'll be in the history books," Stromberg said. "He's the city's
pre-eminent purveyor of smut. Somebody has to claim the title."
Somebody broke a rule at Sketch Tuesday later that night: He put up
artworks he had done at home with a $300 asking price. But Turner
deftly stepped in and offered to buy them in exchange for books. The
artist was delighted and showed up the next day at Last Gasp,
spending three hours perusing the shelves.
The choices were many: Should he pick the Johnny Cash graphic novel
or the R. Crumb's illustrated version of the book of Genesis?
Japanese anime, blaxploitation cinema or "The Art of the Cocktail"?
Turner knows all of the books intimately. Each one tells a story.
"I consider the books, and the artists who make them, as the ball
bearings of culture in this city," he said, maneuvering his blue van
over the steep hills of his metropolitan muse.
He's interrupted by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and answers
his cell phone to discuss shawerma for dinner with his daughter.
Then he stops in front of Super 7, a Japanese toy, apparel and design
store on Post Street, where the owners let him press the button on a
new Star Wars Super Shogun Stormtrooper toy to shoot its wrist like a
bullet across the shop.
"These small publishers, these galleries and museums and independent
bookstores, they represent life for San Francisco artists," Turner
says. "They are keeping this city what it is."
The Last Gasp 40th Anniversary Show: A Who's Who of Lowbrow Art:
Opens Thurs. 6 p.m. Free. 21 and older. 111 Minna Gallery, 111 Minna
St., S.F. (415) 974-1719. 111minnagallery.com.
--
E-mail Meredith May at mmay@sfchronicle.com.
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