Lend­ing rock and alter­na­tive music a form of visual expres­sion in sync with their urban envi­ron­ments, Chuck Sperry, Chris Shaw, and Ron Dono­van embrace, alter, re-assign mean­ing and re-contextualize images until they become the medium-the sub­ject emerg­ing, used purposely–irreverently or reverently–to trans­form ephemeral events and expe­ri­ences into a lex­i­con of shared cul­tural visual memory.

“Dono­van, Shaw and Sperry have made their liv­ing cre­at­ing expres­sive con­tem­po­rary prints and posters for both the col­lec­tor and the gen­eral pub­lic whose capac­ity for images is not just at its max­i­mum, but tee­ter­ing on over­load. Ded­i­ca­tion to their craft has rewarded them with a mas­tery of color the­ory, com­po­si­tion and print design that cre­ates a lan­guage that can be seen, per­haps almost heard, amidst a visu­ally com­pet­i­tive, urban envi­ron­ment. Never known for fol­low­ing the con­sen­sus of any art estab­lish­ment, these three have a strict loy­alty to their craft, and have become lead­ing inno­va­tors of the rock poster art form. Their sus­pi­cion and dis­dain for main­stream Amer­i­can pol­i­tics often char­ac­ter­izes their approach to mak­ing art. With a sin­cere ded­i­ca­tion to a broad pub­lic audi­ence, they reflect a social con­scious­ness and draw much from the imme­di­ate urban envi­ron­ment.” — Renee de Cos­sio, cura­tor SFMOMA