We invite you to join us for Mark Bode’s “Wizards, Lizards, and Broads” closing party!  We have an extra special treat for you… Mark will be performing (drumroll, please)… BODE’S CARTOON CONCERT!  It is a performance that his father, Vaughn Bode, started back in 1972 during the New York Comic Con and Mark continues the tradition to this day.  Enter the world of Bode with us and get lost in the stories of the Wizard, the Lizard, and the Broads.

The closing reception is this Friday, July 30th from 6:30 – 9:30pm.  Due to the erotic nature of the show, this may not be suitable for people under 18 years old.

See you Friday!  Be here.

Limited Edition Buttercup Giclee Print (only 10 available)

If you are interested in purchasing “Buttercup”, please email us at info@1AMSF.com and we will make it happen!

Mark Bode’s “Wizards, Lizards, and Broads” at 1:AM for only 1 more week!  C’mon by and check out this amazing show!

Roman at the projector.

Practicing letterstyles!

Shoot for the stars, kids!

Thanks for being an awesome group and best of luck with your schooling, career, and whatever future endeavors you may pursue! And remember what Roman said, “never give up!”

Valerie Leavy: I was doing a bit of research about you and according to the interwebs, you’ve lived in Northampton, Oakland, Manhattan, and San Francisco. You’re in the Bay Area now. So where did you grow up?

Mark Bode: I was born in upstate New York, in a small town called Utica. Utica was kind of a boom town in the 20’s and 30’s, kind of a mob town that blew up the city, and then when the mob moved out in the 60’s, 70’s, it kind of deflated. But I remember it being huge, you know, people bustling in the streets and stuff. It’s not quite like that anymore, it’s more of a suburban town.

VL: So, you and your father have had a real influence on visual culture. Is there anything in Utica that is kind of a monument to that? Any graffiti?

MB: Um, the only famous people that came out of Utica were um, Dick Clark and Annette Funicello.  And my father.

VL: (laughing) What a legacy.

MB: Um, yeah, so there’s not a whole lot in Utica as far as art and culture and stuff. But I did a mural at the Children’s Museum in Utica about 10 years ago, not sure if it’s still there. But I did a mural inside, you know, for the children. That was the only museum I could get down with at the time. But, maybe things’ll change.

VL: So I read that your Miami Mice comic was wildly successful; in its first year it sold 180,000 copies. What do you think were the factors that led to the widespread popularity of this underground comic?

MB: It was published by an underground comics publisher, Rip Off Press, and they just lived down the street when I came up with that [Miami Mice]. But there was a black & white comics boom that was spurred by the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and that boom was like, Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters and uh-

VL: (laughing) Is that real? Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters?

MB: Yeah, they were real comics, yeah. And everybody was jumpin’ on that bandwagon, tryin’ to get part of that light. And it was, you know, Fish Police, and Hamster Vice, and all these different things. And I came in right at that time and I knew that I wanted to ride that wave. My wife and I were walking through a mall, and we saw a Miami Mice t-shirt and she goes, “Wouldn’t that make a good comic book?” and I was like, “Yeah, it would.” And Miami Vice was huge, it was the biggest thing on TV pretty much. Knowing that you can’t copyright a parody, I knew the Miami Mice t-shirt people were just makin’ money off the shirts and I had a better idea. Well, my wife did actually. And I banged out a comic book in about a month, it was 30 pages. And I didn’t spend much time on the art, I’d just, like, bang it out as quick as I could, get on that wave.

VL: So were you surprised when it was that successful?

MB: Yeah. But we had some warnings, you know, I was hangin’ out at Rip Off Press waiting for the first issue to come in, and we had Chinese speculators calling us.

VL: Wow.

MB: Yeah. And so we knew that something’ was up. And it’s like, Chinese speculators, wow, that’s something. And so the first print run was 40,000. The second issue went to 60,000 and then it went down again to like, 50 or 40. And then it went to 20 on number four. And I called it quits at that point. I didn’t know any better, but 20,000 is still a really nice print run. But I had illusions of grandeur, that I could just dump it, and go do something that was really cool, more Bode-ish, and get those numbers, and since I did that my print run went down to less than 10. So I kinda lost that gamble, but I didn’t wanna be known for creating a parody of a TV show, so I dumped it. But in a year’s time, we sold 180,000 copies. It was a good run, and I got a first taste of a nice day of it as an artist.

VL: Is there a comic or a group of characters that you enjoy illustrating more than the rest, or that you did enjoy even if you don’t do it anymore?

MB: Absolutely. My father’s work is always… I mean, I was brainwashed as a child, you know, my father taught me that these characters were real, before I knew what reality was.  When you’re four or five years old, reality is whatever it is.

VL: Oh yeah, you close your eyes and think no one else can see you.

MB: Yeah. The whole world stops. When you close your eyes. And in fact I’ve contemplated that many times. My father said, “Yes, son. Everything DOES stop.” And you know, I thought that his stuff was real, ‘cause he’d show me the comic, and a day later he’d say, “Let’s go to where I saw Cheech last and wait for him,” So as we’re eating lunch, up on the hill waiting for Cheech, I found myself wondering where he was, and he’s like, “Oh, he’s busy, just hasn’t shown up yet. But at least I can show you the drawings from when we hung out.” So I started envisioning the characters coming up the hill. And that’s what he was doing, he was systematically, in a good way, brainwashing me.

VL: And you DO get the idea that Cheech is probably a really busy guy.

MB: (laughing) Yeah.

VL: So, when I look at the characters- the Cheech Wizard, and the Lizards, and the Broads- I see a kind of a philosophical metaphor, almost. Where we are Cheech, and the Lizards are Others, you know? And of course, the Broads are tantalizing females, beautiful. The Desired. But I get the feeling that Cheech Wizard is kind of like, our selves, and he has desires, and he has indulgences, and is at play. Was that intended?

MB: Yes, very much. My dad, even though he hid Cheech Wizard’s identity, my dad was Cheech. You could never look The Creator in the eyes without going blind. So whenever he’d get under pressure and take the hat off- whether it was his girlfriend, or his Lizard pal, or at gunpoint by the Frog Police- you know, Take The Hat Off, you know- and Cheech would go, “Okay, but I warned ya,” and he’d take the hat off and everybody goes snow-blind. And it’s because you can’t look The Creator in the eyes. I was always the Lizard, the little Apprentice Lizard. He was always trying to teach me things, and would get impatient with the stupidity of the Lizard, and inevitably teach him some kind of harsh lesson, which was like a kick in the balls or whatever it was. But actually, the way the kick-in-the-balls joke happened- and my dad would repeat over and over again- happened because when I was nine or ten years old, maybe, it was like ‘72 or so, we had boxing gloves and we would box on the big king-size bed. He would get on his knees and we’d fight. And every time it got too rough, I’d nail him as hard as I could in the nuts. And my dad would drop. And I’d just be, “YESS! I won again!”

VL: (laughing) I’m surprised he still wanted to play that game.

MB: (laughing) Yeah, he did, he kept comin’ back. But he’s like, “I’ll get you. I’m gonna get you one day.” So, my character, which was the Lizard Apprentice, started getting kicked in the balls all the time, and so forever I am- my character was- being paid back for what I did to my father. And so that’s where that came from.

VL: Um, that’s awesome. So you’re also a tattoo artist. How many Bode characters have you tattooed?

MB: I would say hundreds? I’ve done, probably, aw man, in 16 years of tattooing it’s hard to say how many thousands of tattoos I’ve done. But the ratio [of Bode characters to other tattoos] isn’t that much. I’m very versatile, so a lot of people come to me with really hard line work. Like right now I’m doing Doré etchings on people, and I’m really into the cross-hatching and keeping it exactly the way the original is. So I have the abilities to go really super-detailed, so I tend to get more of that really hard-to-do, Fine Art stuff. But whenever I go on the road, that’s almost all I do is Bode Broads, and Cheech, and the Lizards. Almost exclusively, when I’m on the road, that’s what I get. And that’s okay. If I was doin’ the characters all the time in tattooing I’d probably get sick of doin’ it. And that’s probably a good thing, it keeps it fresh, and I’m still excited when I do one.

VL: I guess I was really hoping there was a story about somebody coming to you with one of these characters, asking you to tattoo it, not knowing that you… are behind them.

MB: Not with those characters. With Ninja Turtles… yes.

VL: That’s so great, so-

[melodic ringtone interlude]

MB: Hello? … I’m good, I’m uh… Can you call me back in about an hour? Okay, thanks, bye.

VL: So. I studied Art History and I love the old Dutch guys. There is more familiarity with, or more of a tradition, of Father and Son working in the same style, it seems, back then. So you have the Bruegels, and the Cranachs, and sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. But it’s rare to see that now. And you’re very skilled, and it IS impossible to tell your work apart [from your father’s], especially because you sort of inherited this body of work at such a young age and, working in his style, probably tried to identify with, or just missed, your father after his passing. So just like those artists, you carry on his legacy and expand it. So what has been the reaction of you having such similar work? These painters that I really admire from hundreds of years ago, that was respected. But have you had any comments about it that are counter to that? What are your experiences?

MB: My father, actually, the day before he died, he really knew that I was planning on following in his footsteps. And he said, “Follow me, but don’t get too close. But we’re gonna be Bode and Son. And we’re gonna do great things together.” and he said that the day before he died and I was 12 years old. And he was working on the Lizard of Oz poster- he had just worked on it a week before at a comic convention. So I started drawing what I would do with it. That’s what I was doing right before he died, and that’s when he told me, “That’s gettin’ pretty close, Mark. Maybe you should try to go away from what I’m doing and you’ll have a better time of it.” But he didn’t know he was gonna die, and I didn’t either, so.. I took what he said with a grain of salt and continued to imitate him (laughing). It didn’t stop me that day, even when he died, I was workin’ on it. And I still was like, “Eh, I’m not gonna listen to him.” I liked the characters too much. By the time I was 15, I had pretty much given up my childhood. After my dad died I had decided I wasn’t gonna be hanging with children anymore, I was gonna hang out with adult artists, my mother’s and father’s friends, and I started to get tutored by Larry Todd in particular, my dad’s collaborator. By the time I was 15, I was coloring my father’s work for Heavy Metal magazine, getting paid, and I thought I was pretty hot shit in high school. And I went to comic conventions and they’d be like, “How could you even hold a pencil to your dad? How could you do that, hope to be as good as he was?” And my dad’s voice would come to me: “You can do anything you want, Mark. You can be whatever you want in this place.” I always remembered those words, so it never fazed me that much. Kinda bugged me a little bit that people would keep saying that, but if I thought like that, if I thought that I could never add to the art, then I wouldn’t have done it. I can add to it and finish where he left off. I love keeping him alive like that. It’s a way to defy death. He was -he’s still my best friend, and I still work with him. He’s immortal and I’m mortal, and the two of us work perfectly together. And no one can take that away from me.

VL: Very well put. And I think that, through this unique situation, you have this opportunity to carry on a decades-long relationship with him. In a way.

MB: Yeah. I still have dreams about him all the time where he comes and looks at my art. One dream in particular about six, seven years ago, I was doin’ a strip for While You Were Sleeping and it was my father’s characters, my father’s format, new stories… it was so close. And in the dream my father was in Grand Central Station with me (which was his favorite train station) and he went to a magazine stand and picked up While You Were Sleeping and flipped through it and stopped at my page, and looked at me really seriously, and goes, “Thanks for rippin’ me off.” And I just went totally serious, I mean, he was totally serious, and it took me back, and I said as clear as day- you know how sometimes in your dream you’re like, garbling? You’re talking in your sleep and you can’t talk? I talked perfectly clear to him and I said, “Vaughn, Dad, you are done. Your art is over, your life is stopped. Your art is stopped. You’re one artist. I’m one artist. I’m gonna do what I do, and that’ll be it. And I’m one artist. If I do you, it’s times two for you, and times two for me. And it makes us stronger.” And he just beamed a smile, and gave me a hug, and that was it.

VL: That’s awesome.

MB: I start gettin’ a little choked up over it.

VL: Yeah, me too. (laughing)

MB: But that’s our relationship, so…

VL: So… do you still do spraycan art?

MB: Yeah, absolutely. That’s my new favorite field. I mean, I think I like doing that more than anything. I wasn’t good at it till recently. I always dabbled in it. My first piece was the doors in Spraycan Art. That was my very first spraycan piece and I actually have the doors. My friend saved them because they ended up in that book. He saved them and then sold them back to me so I have my very first graffiti piece on those doors in my studio.

But I kinda sucked for a long time. Like I’d see other people doing Bode characters way better than I could. It was kind of annoying, you know. But I was a late starter, I got started in my 30’s. I moved to SF in 2005 and met Cuba and he hooked me up with walls. And I was still green but
had a huge palette, you know, and I just poured creative energy into it. Low pressure spraycans changed my life, now I can do anything with it. I love going big. It’s better than staying in my studio. Right now I’m doing a recycling plant project. 28th and Peralta, painting the whole compound.

VL: Nice, I’ll have to go check that out. Thanks for doing this interview with us here at 1:AM and we’ll be watching for Cobalt 60 in the movie theaters.

Mark Bode’s “Wizards, Lizards, and Broads” on exhibit now at 1:AM gallery through July 31st!

Valerie Leavy is an art and history fanatic from St. Louis, Missouri, now based in San Francisco and the newest member of the 1:AM team.

Spray practice!

Deck fun.

Customized boards.

Race to the finish!

“I felt completely comfortable with my limited skills. The instructors helped when needed but really let me jump in head first and explore my talents. One of the coolest things I’ve done in San Francisco.”-Allison

“1AM workshop blew me away! One of the must-dos in SF and in life!”-Candice

“The 1:AM crew was friendly, knowledgeable and completely authentic. They guided our team through the process of creating original art for our office space and helped us to throw up a sweet mural. It was a fantastic experience. I want to do it again!”-Raymond

Racepoint reppin' hard.

And to think, it all began months ago with a chance encounter between 1:AM’s Marketing Director and Racepoint Group’s executive Vice President Bill Orr at the S2 Consulting Company Holiday Party.  He wanted a dope activity for his team and 1:AM did its best to deliver.  If you’re also interested in having a private workshop for your team, business or group of friends, please contact Class Director Gina at: gina@1amsf.com for more information!

More photos on flickr.

Mark with Mike Giant

Mark with his uncle, Vincent in front of a portrait of his father, Vaughn

Team 1:AM loves working with Mark!!!

Check out more opening photos on flickr.

“Wizards, Lizards, and Broads” now at 1:AM Gallery through Saturday, July 31st!

L-R: "Cobalt 60 Cover #1" by Vaughn Bode and Larry Todd, "Cobalt 60 Movie" by Mark Bode and Craig Farley

Bode Broad by Mark Bode and KC Angel

"Chaboochek" by Mark Bode (concept by Vaughn Bode)

Are you ready? “Wizards, Lizards, and Broads” (OH MY!) coming to San Francisco this Friday, June 25th!

Under the direction of Nate1 and Roman, they met every Saturday in May and one Saturday June.  Check out the photos chronicling their experience.

Practice.

After the letters, comes the background.

Muralizing.

A simple but strong message: "Girls Stick Together"

Thanks YMCA Bayview!  We can’t wait to see your next creation, girls!

"Shriners Venom" by Hydro74, Mixed Media on Canvas

Hydro’s Thoughts On His Art:

“The soul purpose of my career is to push the boundries in doing what I feel is relevant to the market as well as extract various elements and trends to be able to offer them up in my own personal work. But let’s be honest. I do what I love because I love it. Not because I have to do it, nor am forced to do it, but rather passionate about doing what I do. I firmly believe in having set style tones, yet a sense of diversity to make any various project unique to the demands that are set forth.

Typography is far more than just a simple addition to a product or brand, it is what sets the tone for the entire piece. Each letter has a way of reacting and uniting to form meaningful, powerful words that embrace a sense of emotion or power. With that knowledge, producing pieces that best represent the needs is what Hydro74 prides itself on to help other brands find their identity and voice, philosophically and aesthetically.

Apparel is a amazing medium that is widely embraced by masses to best symbolize one’s individuality while conforming to various cliques. This is something I fully understand and appreciate. Even to the point that a close friend & I put on a T-Shirt Gallery Show that grows in attendence and online with each new version that is produced. Apparel is everything that is meaningful in design because it is a common bond everyone shares and voices our most inner feelings without having to openly state it each and every time we speak. It is the true cog in the wheel of conformity that allows us the illusion of individuality and our own personal choice to be unique in this very common world.

Complexity and a fluid organic approach is what is highly valued in each and every piece. A Illustration to me is something that tells a story with out words needed. It builds a bond with the viewer who will either get it, or find it horrible, yet, the interaction is what is desired when doing a piece. Some Illustrations are trend based iconic structures meant to embrace the masses to encourage sales, while others are explorations turned to symbolic ideas on paper or fabric. Illustration is something I find deep meaning in.

It is not always what you might expect. Over the years of my career in design, I’ve been active in various other aspects of design that has helped create, develop and direct various pieces to become successful in their usage.”

Only 3 Vader prints left!

LAST DAYS to check out Graphic Attack in person!  Come on down!

A team from Facebook wanted to celebrate the completion of one of their big projects.  But being a leader in innovation and out of the box thinking, Facebook was looking for something different… something with a little bit of creativity, ingenuity, and something with a lot of awesomeness. With their cooler of drinks in tow, they headed to 1:AM to get down on the corner of 6th and Howard.

Nate1 and Robert Gonzalez, one of our in-house artists, took the team under their wings and showed them the way of the graffiti artist.  Below are photos that capture the play-by-play of their day at 1:AM.

Q&A with Mr. Nate1

Robert instructing how to spray stencils

And they're off on the wall! Concept was created by Facebook-ers.

Nothing but smiles at the end of the day.

Facebook's creation: H A C K

WHAT AN AWESOME DAY!  Thanks to Facebook for spending their day with us and having a fun-do attitude!  The minute we saw that cooler roll in the gallery, we knew this group of people were ready to throw down and have lots of fun.

If you and your team are in desperate need of something fun to boost morale, look no further, 1:AM gotchu.  Contact gina@1AMSF.com and let her help you customize a graffiti workshop for your company today!