Rock poster pioneer
Cancer challenging Fairfax’s Pat Ryan
I’ve always been fascinated by the underground art scene that flourished in Marin in the 1970s and ’80s. And I’ve been a fan of Fairfax artist Pat Ryan, a pioneer from that rock art era, since he created a promo campaign for the IJ in the ’ 70s that featured a cartoon character called Waldo Grade, that stomped his way into Marin through the Rainbow Tunnel. If the IJ was ever hip, that was the time.
Ryan’s family reached out to me the other day, letting me know that he has been diagnosed with stage four cancer, that he requires aroundthe-clock home care and that a GoFundMe account (gf.me/u/ y9ncrt) has been set up to help with his medical and living expenses.
Under such challenging circumstances, I was honored that he took a few minutes this week to talk on the phone about the heady times and creative craziness he was so much a part of during that storied Marin renaissance in underground art and music.
“We were a bunch of happy hippies,” he says. “We were enjoying life so much that we sat around and made art about it. There were fun things going on all the time, all day long. My feeling was if you can’t
“We were a bunch of happy hippies. We were enjoying life so much that we sat around and made art about it. There were fun things going on all the time, all day long. My feeling was if you can’t have fun, why bother?”
— Pat Ryan
have fun, why bother?”
His five- decade body of work includes a wide range of art and design, including more than 100 rock posters for everything from the Fairfax Festival and the Rex Foundation to Whistlestock benefits and Reggae on the River. He’s painted portraits of many of
his rock heroes, among them Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis and saintly marijuana guru Bob Marley.
Along with his community of creative cohorts, he’s been an active member and ardent supporter of the Rock Poster Society, which has shown and celebrated his posters and paintings at its gatherings and events.
“Whenever it was time to get together and do something cool, Pat was always at the front of the line,” says Marty Hohn, society president. “He’s been a presence for a long time.”
The Artista gang
At 79, Ryan holds the distinction of being the last surviving co-founder of the Artista gang, a collective of hippie artists that produced concerts in clubs and community centers throughout Marin in the ’80s, booking top local musicians acts as well as more well-known acts such as Carlos Santana, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Huey Lewis and the News. Ryan cre
ated the posters for many of those shows.
“Pat was like the glue that kept everything together,” says Paul Giampaoli, a longtime friend and former owner of San Anselmo Printing, which reproduced a number of Ryan’s pieces over his long career.
In its heyday, Artista boasted more than 700 members and friends, including rock impresarios Bill Graham and Chet Helms. They had their own softball team and sported custom-made satin gang jackets with the Artista symbol on the back — a rainbow dragon emerging from a tube of paint with a lightning bolt in its clutches.
Ryan created that striking image with his late friends — underground comics artist
Dave Sheridan, a collaborator and studio mate, and Alton Kelley, one of the big five psychedelic poster artists.
Ryan’s jacket is embroidered with the title Grambo, a nickname his grandchildren gave him that’s befitting his position as one of the founding fathers of Artista.
“He’s kind of the godfather of the gang,” says Kurt “Crowbar” Kangas, current head of the club. “I want everyone to know how important he’s been.”
When he was starting out, Ryan attended the Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles and worked as an art director for advertising agencies before dropping out and moving to Fairfax in 1971 with his soul singer wife of more than 50 years, Cyretta, who died in 2016, and their four children. Two of their daughters, April and Amber, are also singers. April is married to musician Monroe Grisman and Amber to guitarist Tal Morris.
After settling down in
his new Marin County digs, Ryan rented a studio with other local T-shirt and rock poster artists in
a fabled building at Second and B streets in San Rafael.
All the artists who had
studios there, including Kelley, Stanley “Mouse” Miller and fellow poster artist Victor Moscoso, became collectively known as “the Peanut Gallery.”
They established the Concrete Foundation of Fine Arts. The poster Ryan created for that tongue-incheek organization is pictured in Paul Grushkin’s coffee table book “The Art of Rock.”
When all is said and done, Ryan may best be remembered for the produce crate art he began creating in the ’ 70s for fictional marijuana brands like Humboldt Honey, Super Skunk, Stupor Farms and the ever-popular Muy Blastido.
His pot crate labels, under the auspices of the imaginary California Homegrowers Association, have since appeared on album covers, T-shirts and concert posters. As the unofficial “High Priest of Cannabis Americana,” he was recently listed in an issue of CelebStoner. com as one of the Top 100 Cannabis Influencers of All Time, along with Willie Nelson, the Grateful Dead and Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
Along those lines, I asked Ryan if, in those early stoner days, he could have foreseen the legalization of pot and the cannabis boom we’re experiencing today.
“Of course,” he says, without hesitation. “There was no other way for it to go.”
Since he’s been a young artist, Ryan has been fascinated by Native American life and culture and has created many American Indian historical paintings, working on them right up until he became ill.
“I was always interested in that and it caused me to want to learn more,” he says.
“They were not teaching it in books, so I had to go out searching for information on my own. I did a lot of research.”
And it shows on the canvas. The aforementioned Miller saw one of Ryan’s paintings and came away with a whole new perception of his work that goes well beyond the poster art he’s known for.
“I think it’s high art,” he says. “It blew me away.”