Tagged: Project Mayhem
42 Years of strange doings in SF/Oakland/Bay Area & Beyond. Please help me raise some $ for my once in a lifetime show
This November 17th. – general fundraiser at Pro Arts. Open to the public. Tickets available at: Eventbright tix to fundraiser.
Limited Curated experience. 10 people max – Tour of artist studio and limited edition of 10 signed prints of Golden Gate Bridge 50th Anniversary : Tickets here: Eventbright tix to curated experience.
Billboard Liberation Front action 1980. Collaboration between “Jack Napier” (John Law) & “Simon Wagstaff” nome de guerre for a well known local SF character.
JL neon piece for SRL “Doom”show 1994.
JL photo Golden Gate Bridge 1986
Natalia Mount, Executive Director of this landmark gallery in the very heart of Oakland, is curating the show and has been working with me to burrow and wade through my massive pile of poorly organized photos, video/film, documents, neon pieces and all sorts of material produce during my four decades of trouble making, experience design, artifact making, collaborative work and explorations.
JL as “Vito Lawtoni” in Don Herron’s The Fatty Arbuckle caper, 1980.
We need to raise a substantial amount of money in order to print huge photos, produce several finished videos out of mountains of raw footage, restore some neon sculptures and make some new, finance travel and accommodations for five (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 as of now, maybe more) of my collaborators (unindicted co-conspirators as they say) from over the years and to cover any number of other expenses. 
As usual, I am broke and in a hurry. I don’t drink, drug, gamble, womanize or waste money; it is just tough financially these days. Pro-Arts is experiencing the typical travails of most smaller cultural institutions and is underfunded as well. Moneys raised will all go directly to producing this show and to support this wonderful community based, yet influential gallery.
Kodachrome Magazine 2017 article on neon artists featuring JL
“Detroit” 2016. 28′ x 14″ x 10″ metal, glass, distressed matchbox cars, astro-turf, neon, opaque crystal ball. Like most of my work, this is a ham fisted metaphor! Various neon installations and sculpture here.
Please pass this link along and spread the word. If you have worked with me or enjoyed any of the products of the collaborations and (occasionally incognito) creative projects I have driven or contributed to or any of the transgressive cabals (my neon piece is at 1:44 & 2:00) or ridiculous pranks that may have benefited from my efforts, I really need the help and feedback now. I am not done yet; this show is just a retrospective of my first four decades here. With luck, we’ll have another one when I am 100 in 2058……
Oh, almost forgot, this is also my 60th B-day party.
LINK TO 42 YEAR ONE MAN RETROSPECTIVE AT PRO ARTS GALLERY JUNE 7TH TIL AUGUST 24TH, 2019
Chuck Palahniuk & Lidia Yuknavitch
One of the most interesting writers of the last couple of decades is speaking at the Castro Theater this Thursday. He’s presenting with another author, Lidia Yuknovitch as she unveils what looks to be a fascinating new novel: The Small Backs of Children They will be interviewed by the always entertaining and often insightful Broke Ass Stuart. Chuck Palahniuk is, in my estimation the closest thing Gen X thru the Millennial generation has to a Kerouac. Palahniuk speaks to th
e post Baby Boom kids – the kids raised by single moms after the demise of the American nuclear family, much as Kerouac spoke to the generation of young men coming back from the Great War wondering “well now that we rule all, what next – what does life mean?” In Fight Club, the young men were compelled to find out what it was to be a man without having the benefit of any live-at-home role models – “If you could fight anyone, who would you choose?’ “I’d fight Kirk.” That was a sentiment any young guy raised by his mom could appreciate.
Palahniuk recently published the 1st installment of the sequel to Fight Club in graphic novel format along with artist Cameron Stewart. I found a copy while touring the Portland Area a while back. It’s ten years after the action in the novel and the nameless narrator (played by Ed Norton in the movie) is now a suburban office commuter on lots of prescription happy pills and he’s married Marla Singer (!!!) AND the have a young son. Oh, the nameless guy has a name now. Sebastian…..
My Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society co-author Carrie Galbraith and had the pleasure to speak with Chuck at an earlier Commonwealth Inforum presentation. We had a blast talking about Cacophony’s influence on Project Mayhem in Fight Club among other topics. I won’t be able to make it this Thursday, but you should. Oh, and if you get a chance to talk to Chuck, ask him where he got the name for the nameless FC guy!
I’m looking forward to reading Yuknavitch now. An endorsement by CP is not to be taken too lightly.
“Your life doesn’t happen in any kind of order. Events don’t have cause and effect relationships he way you wish they did. It’s all a series of fragments and repetitions and pattern formations. Language and water have this in common.”
― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water: A Memoir