Many years ago, spray-painted portraits of pop culture icons laid over psychedelic and geometric backdrops started appearing posted to telephone poles in random places around town. They were like little oases that you would drive by and catch out of the corner of your eye, just long enough for the image to register in your mind.
Just when you thought, ‘Did I just see the Fonz giving the double thumbs up to Bremerton on that telephone pole?’ You’d already passed it. If you passed by that way again, the next time you’d see a little more detail. The next time, you’d see a little more and you’d think, ‘Huh, that really is the Fonz giving Bremerton the double thumbs up.’
The next time, it would be gone.
This wasn’t some city-funded public art project. It was more random acts of public art.
You couldn’t really tell who was behind it. The artist didn’t really scream for credit. You wouldn’t have been able to read the signature even if it was there.
Then, these spray-painted portraits of pop culture icons starting adorning the walls at local coffeeshops, restaurants and bars. They were painted not on canvas but on old vinyl records, a novel idea at the time. Still, none of them were signed. You could buy them at $20 apiece from the establishment but if you didn’t ask, you wouldn’t know who the artist was.
The year was 2008. The artist, Dave Ryan.
“If I ever get rich and famous, I don’t think a first print is gonna be worth anything,” Dave laughed when we interviewed him in one of the first smokestacks of volume one in 2009.
Dave rules.
Dave is from Bremerton.
Dave’s got an immense story, traveling through paying the rent by selling spray-painted records, onto an impressive bottle cap mural of the old Manette bridge, hitchhiking across the country, overcoming a broken neck and brain cancer, moving to the city then winding up back in Bremerton at present with a beautiful wife and baby girl and a backyard garden overlooking the Washington Narrows. He takes the ferry to Seattle a few times a week to run his shop in the underground level of the Pike Place Market.
April marks five years for Dave as a shopkeep at Pike Place. To celebrate, we walked to the ferry with him and let the guy who gave him his first-ever art show—March 2008 at Ploy Studios in downtown Bremerton—ask the questions.
Mike with Ploy starts by pointing out Dave’s artistic prolificness and self-employed determination and gets right to the point asking, what is his muse?
“Prolific and determined, what’s my muse, hmm…” Dave takes a drag off a joint, framed by the ferry dock off in the distance. “I think I put myself into a position to be pretty much unemployable. I can’t go working for someone else, you know. When I was on the road, we had this mantra. The acronym was MAP. So it’s Momentum Ambition and Patience. I’ve got my momentum so I just don’t wanna stop, you know. I don’t know, I’ve also got a lot of marbles in my head that I’m always trying to shake out. And I’ve got a lot of stuff. Right now, I’ve got a basement full of frames and paintings that I’m gonna paint over. And I’m trying to just limit myself to what I have. And I’m making some really good shit from having sat on some stuff and letting some ideas stew. It’s just all about keeping momentum going.”
“So you kind of dodged the first question,” Mike responds. “So… let’s, uh, reiterate.”
“Did I?” Dave laughs. “Maybe what are my past muses?”
“I was thinking…” Mike starts but Dave interjects.
“Maybe the answer to the first question is… I watch a lot of TV, or I did,” Dave thinks.
“Can I be honest Dave?” Mike says. “I was more thinking like past Dave. The way I knew you when you and Sarah got married. I saw a lot of motivation in you. And the second question was more like, now you have a family, that was my lead at least. Does that motivate you? I think it changed it, or did it not?”
“Oh yeah,” Dave thinks about it. “I definitely think I’m a lot less reckless I would say. I’m not putting on my list of things to do to get into a car with a stranger and see where the road ends. Having a family will make you hold on to what you have and realize how much more you have to lose.”
“Artistically though, do you feel like you’ve been on the same path?” Mike asks.
“Maybe,” Dave says. “I was going hard when we first met. But also in terms of motivation for what I do, I have three older brothers and two parents who were just super old. My dad was born in 1934 and my mom was born in 1940”
“Oh, wow,” Mike says. “My mom was born in ’48”
“Yeah, my dad was 48 when I was born,” Dave says.
“So, your medium has changed over the last few years,” Mike changes the subject. “Can you speak to that?”
“I’m self taught so I guess my skills are kind of like the tools in a tool box,” Dave says. “You buy a new tool when you need it. So sometimes, I’ve got an idea for something and I just can’t quite bridge the gap with that certain skill set so I try something else.”
“Here’s an example, I just finished right before I headed down to Ploy…” Dave pulls out his phone to show us a picture of one of his latest works, a portrait of the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse character Jambi. “So I did this Jambi on like a piece of scrap from when I built the wall in my store. And this is the closest-sized frame I had to it. So then how do I bridge that gap? I used fabric as a background. So it’s a little more layered. Right now, I’m kind of doing like painting collages where I’m taking a frame from one thing, putting a hole in the painting, you know, making a dimensional aspect to it.”
“Right, and not being confined by that,” Mike responds.
“I’ve been doing like these Kool-Aid Men invasions coming from different dimensions,” Dave describes more of his new work. “And another where it’s like Danny Devito busting out of the painting, getting born.”
“I remember the first one of those that I saw of yours was of the Super Mario Brothers getting ready to jump and hit the ‘boing!’ Mike recalls.
“Yeah!” Dave remembers. “So it’s kind of like a different dimension of what I was doing stenciling, just taking it a few steps further.”
“You have possible cult artist status within some circles,” Mike says. “Who are they and why the support? Where have you found your successes? I’m thinking like Ron Solo…”
“I had this art show, I think it was 10 years ago,” Dave goes back, “Where this venue just gave me carte blanch to do whatever I wanted. And I really stepped up for it because I’d sold the ‘Yoda Getting a Lap Dance’ painting right before this show and I had to replace it with something. So I did a Darth Vader one. And then I thought, I should just do a whole low brow sci fi show. Where it’s just a bunch of stupid sci fi that’s just twisted around. So I did this show. And people liked them. I painted the Ron Solo and the Chewy Cuts with the intention of them being shirts so it was a more stripped down style too, I think, and it really resonated with people. When I opened up my store, I quadrupled the prices on those two pieces just to push the sales of the shirts and the prints. Because as long as I had those on the wall, I knew my rent was getting paid. I sold both of those paintings fairly recently, so now I’ve gotta keep making some cool stuff.”
“Let’s talk about stuff like Comicon,” Mike says. “Where were you vending at? That was probably a big part of it too.”
“I was vending every weekend I could fill, whether it was a farmers market or…” Dave starts the list.
“Or teaming up with Manette fest,” Mike adds. “I know you were doing that heavy for a few years.”
“Yeah, I went really hard with that for a few years,” Dave says.
“How far away from Seattle did you go with it?” Mike asks.
“I did New York a few times, the Comicons up there,” Dave says. “My first time, I split a booth with a buddy of mine and it was so small that we couldn’t even stand shoulder to shoulder. One person would stand up front and sell and then we would just trade off. My hostel had fallen through and I was like, ‘Where am I gonna stay in New York City?’ At the time the Occupy Wall Street protests were going on and I thought, ‘Well, I could probably camp out there and do this four-day show.’ There was one point where I’m literally unrolling my sleeping bag at Occupy Wall Street and I was like, ‘I’ve gotta try this hostel one more time to see if a bed’s opened up…’ and I got in! So I didn’t have to sleep on the streets of New York to work the booth the next day.”
“So uh… political? Why and why not?” Mike asks. “In your art. That’s a loaded question, to be fair, I know.”
“Sure,” Dave says. “I don’t dabble too much with political art. I’ve got a few pieces I think are zingers but you know its hard to sell other ideas when you are pushing an ideal. My work is fun. I try to make sure people leave happy when they experience it. Around 2008, so this would’ve probably been the first shows at ploy, I did like a George Bush Jr. in his flight suit with like a shattered America behind him. And it was one of the few ones that I’ve done with words, but it said ‘mission accomplished.’”
“Do you remember everybody freaking out about George Bush though?” Mike thinks back.
“I’ve found whenever I do political art I end up with a big inventory that doesn’t tend to move too much,” Dave says. “I try to focus on the more common things rather than the divisive stuff.” // JAMES MUNK
Find more Dave at Crypticon and NW Folk Life in May, at his shop Dave Ryan POP ART on the lower level of Pike Place Market and online @daveryanpopart.
Find more ploy @ployrocks
