BUKOWSKI AND BURROUGHS

Sam Cherry: Photographs of Charles Bukowski, The Black Cat, and Skid Row April 4 – May 2, 2009

26 February, 2009–Track 16 is pleased to present Sam Cherry: Photographs of Charles Bukowski, The Black Cat, and Skid Row. The exhibition runs from April 4 to May 2, 2009, with an opening reception on Saturday, April 4 from 6 to 9 PM.

Sam Cherry’s Photographs of Charles Bukowski, The Black Cat, and Skid Row take the viewer on an historical journey through intimate moments with Charles Bukowski, the 1940s Bohemian scene at The Black Cat Café (San Francisco’s hub for the creative), and Los Angeles’ Skid Row in the 1980s.

Cherry was born in 1913 in Philadephia, the son of Russian emigrants who barely escaped persecution in the Ukraine. His father a tailor, dabbled in bootlegging whiskey in their basement. Eventually he was caught and jailed, and the entire family fled to Los Angeles where they lived in poverty for many years in Hollywood.

At the age of 16, Sam joined the ranks of thousands of downtrodden men and youth around the country, and hit the rails. He eventually settled in San Francisco, where he picked up a camera and began to capture the Great Depression – the down and out, the hungry, the vulnerable, crooked cops, religious fanatics, and Hobo Jungles. With a keen sense for composition and humanity, Sam turned his attention toward documenting his own pre-Beat Generation Bohemian scene at the The Black Cat Café in San Francisco, an establishment that encouraged a creative and lively environment frequented by artists, writers and the “fringe” element.

Years later, through mutual friends, Sam was introduced to the writer Charles Bukowski, who once stated that Sam Cherry’s tough character was an influential component in his creation of his own tough guy persona and protagonists. Cherry’s son, poet Neeli Cherkovski, and Bukowski became life-long friends, eventually starting their own literary magazine together. (Neeli would later write Bukowski’s biography). Sam and Neeli spent a great deal of time with Bukowski, during which Cherry captured took some of Bukowski’s most iconic images. In the early 1960s Sam opened up Cherry’s Bookstore and Art Gallery, an intellectual and artistic sanctuary in San Bernardino, well-known as a stopover for hippies and cultural explorers traveling along route 66.

During the 1970s, Sam spent a great deal of time documenting the destruction of the California citrus industry- perhaps the only photographic study of this important change in California History. In the 1980s, Cherry spent time documenting Los Angeles’ Skid Row, photographing the “new homeless” – a modern-day Depression and a mirror of his youth. Cherry’s photographic archive also includes portraits of artist/writer friends like Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso, as well as important California historical figures such as Cesar Chavez and Jerry Brown.

Track 16 Gallery & Smart Art Press will publish seventeen portfolios of Sam Cherry’s photographs of Charles Bukowski. The portfolio/prints will be available in two sizes, 16 x 20 in., Edition of 12, and 11 x 14 in., Edition of 5. Each will contain eleven silver gelatin prints, signed and numbered. The 11 x 14 in. portfolio will come in a hand-made box.

The exhibition will be shown concurrently with Malcolm McNeill and William S. Burroughs: The Lost Art of Ah POOK IS HERE.

Malcolm McNeill and William S. Burroughs: The Lost Art of Ah POOK IS HERE April 4 – May 2, 2009

Over the years of our collaboration, Malcolm McNeill produced more than a hundred pages of artwork. However, owing partly to the expense of full color reproductions, and because the book (Ah Pook is Here) falls into neither the category of the conventional illustrated book nor that of a comix publication, there have been difficulties with the arrangements for the complete work. The book is in fact unique . . . –William S. Burroughs, 1978

26 February, 2009–Track 16 is pleased to present the west coast premiere of “The Lost Art of Ah POOK IS HERE,” paintings, drawings, and prints from the unfinished Word/Image novel Ah POOK IS HERE: a remarkable seven-year collaboration between author William S. Burroughs and artist Malcolm McNeill. The exhibition runs from April 4 to May 2, 2009, with an opening reception on Saturday, April 4 from 6 to 9 PM.

William Burroughs and Malcolm McNeill began working together in London in 1970 when McNeill was in his final year of art school. Their first collaboration, a comic strip entitled “The Unspeakable Mr. Hart,” appeared in the English magazine CYCLOPS. When the magazine folded, Burroughs and McNeill continued the project in book form. The proposed work, a 120-page word/Image novel was renamed Ah POOK IS HERE - after the Mayan death god.

There was no market for Graphic Novels at the time and without financial incentive the book could not be produced on a full time basis. After seven years, it was finally abandoned. It was subsequently published in 1979 in text form only. Apart from eleven pages published in Rush Magazine in 1976, none of the images from Ah POOK IS HERE have been seen publicly on the west coast. Track 16 Gallery will be showing prints, original drawings and paintings, as well as ephemera associated with Ah Pook and other projects McNeill worked on with Burroughs.

McNeill has produced illustrations for several publications including The New York Times, National Lampoon, Psychology Today and Marvel Comics. He also wrote and illustrated his own monthly science fiction series for Gallery Magazine. He was involved in television production for fifteen years, first as a designer, then as a director of music videos, commercials, and short films. He won numerous awards in this field including an Emmy for his first network project - the opening title sequence to Saturday Night Live in 1984. He has been a guest speaker on various aspects of Visual Narrative at Pratt Institute and Cooper Union in New York, The Art Director’s Club in New York and at the Broadcast Design Awards in Seattle.

The Lost Art of Ah POOK IS HERE will be shown concurrently with Sam Cherry: Photographs of Charles Bukowski, The Black Cat, and Skid Row. For more information, please visit our website at www.track16.com.

Ah Pook Is Here was the formative creative experience of my life without question, beginning as it did at the end of art-school. And having Bill (William Burroughs) as a one-on-one mentor for all those years was a unique privilege. I gained insights into his personal life and working methods which could only occur during a collaboration such as Ah Pook and they fundamentally influenced my own sense of word and image making. –Malcolm McNeill

BUKOWSKI AND BURROUGHS

Sam Cherry:
Photographs of Charles Bukowski, The Black Cat, and Skid Row

&

Malcolm McNeill and William S. Burroughs:
The Lost Art of Ah POOK IS HERE