About

Bay Area artist Ron Dono­van was raised in Hon­olulu, Hawaii. His father, a pio­neer­ing com­puter sys­tems sci­en­tist with a keen intel­lect, worked on spe­cial projects for the mil­i­tary and his mother, a home maker, wanted her son to pur­sue a pro­fes­sion, law or med­i­cine. It was his father who encour­aged Donovan’s cre­ative nature and artis­tic abil­ity and sup­ported his desire to fol­low his pas­sion. Dono­van took his tal­ents to the main­land and stud­ied at Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of Arts and Crafts in Oak­land, California.

It was the 80’s, Rea­gan was in office, yup­pies were the rage, invest­ment bank­ing a ris­ing pro­fes­sion, the mon­e­tary car­rot of cap­i­tal­is­tic dreams dan­gled in front of col­lege stu­dents of the era. Donovan’s inter­est in pol­i­tics and peo­ple found expres­sion through a dis­cov­ered pas­sion: silk screen­ing. His rebel­lious, humor­ous con­sti­tu­tion, immer­sion in the local art and music scene, per­son­able nature, and charis­matic per­son­al­ity uni­fied his peers.

Before long, he became well known for his rene­gade, abun­dant cre­ative energy and can­did expres­sion. Donovan’s Pacific Island back­ground and influ­ence invig­o­rated his focus on Amer­i­can polit­i­cal satire and rela­tions, and multi-cultural stud­ies. It was also in col­lege where he met Chris Shaw, fel­low col­lab­o­ra­tor in the exhi­bi­tion. Later, Dono­van met Sperry and set up a print­ing stu­dio, a Warho­lian fac­tory of sorts, at an old vacated San Fran­cisco fire­house on Polk Street. When they were asked to vacate in the 90’s, they crossed the bay and set up shop in West Oak­land, while retain­ing the orig­i­nal name, The Firehouse.