Michael Rios has lived a lucky life. For almost 17 years, he has gotten up in the morning, walked downstairs to the garage beneath the small stucco house on York Street where he lives, and done nothing but draw and paint. He painted album covers, concert posters, illustrations for a fifth-grade social sciences textbook. He traded artwork for rent.
It was good while it lasted. In a turn of events not unfamiliar to anyone who’s lived in this neighborhood, the house he has been living in is being sold. He’s out of dough and on Thursday — a week from today — he’ll be selling his paintings at Medjool at 2522 Mission Street from 5:30 to 9 p.m.
“I am not in the highest of spirits,” says Rios. “I’m just going through some changes right now. I’m in the middle of figuring out what to do.”
Inside the garage sits a silver Nissan, enveloped on all sides by long rows of paintings and printmaking screens. Boxes of paints are stacked on a table, where a sculpture of an American bald eagle crouches near a bottle of orange Gatorade. The paintings are wild and vibrant and sinuous, and almost glow in contrast to the dark mustiness of the garage.
Rios begins abstractedly pulling out artwork, in seemingly random order:
* A pencil drawing for the 24th Street BART mural done by Rios and two other artists in 1975, in which the train runs along the bent backs of a line of people in a not-so-subtle protest of the way that BART’s financing was carried out over three decades ago.
* A heavily layered pen-and-ink mock-up of a cartoon Mission full of the playfully down and out — mice marching off to factory jobs, getting immunized at the Mission Neighborhood Health Center, passing by the newly formed Mission Coalition Organization, killing time in jail, outside of La Palma, and in the unemployment line. Painted in 1971, it was the first mural in the Mission, says Rios, though it’s long gone now. The drawing style looks a little familiar. “That was influenced by R. Crumb,” says Rios. “He was a friend of mine at the time.”
* A photograph of a billboard with a fierce-looking Frida Kahlo painted on it — “liberated” by Rios and a group of artists from Galeria de la Raza. “There was just liquor and tobacco ads there before,” he says. “The company that owned the billboard got upset, of course. We put up a big fight, and we won.”
* A photograph of another mural, once on 22nd and South Van Ness. “The sun ate it up,” says Rios. “It was beyond my control.”
* Seemingly infinite paintings of and for Carlos Santana (he and Rios go way back), with the occasional Jerry Garcia, John Coltrane or John Lee Hooker thrown in. “He was a far-out old man,” says Rios, admiringly, of Hooker. “Very shamanastic.” He declines to elaborate further.
* A poster of a giant M&M candy standing, arms folded, in front of a swirling riot of colorful paint, wearing a tie-dyed vest and a rebellious expression on its candy face. “That was the first time an artist designed an M&Ms package,” says Rios. “It was a toss-up between me and Peter Max, and some guy who worked with Warhol. But they said to me, ‘We’re choosing you because you’re from San Francisco. You were one of those psychedelic kids.’ They put my signature on 350 million bags of candy.”
Was he one of those psychedelic kids?
“I never considered myself that.”
The phone rings, and Rios picks up. “Hey man,” he says, lapsing immediately into perfect beatnik. “How you doing, brother?” He pauses. “He did a flip on me, man. He got real negative…” His voice trails off.
In 2003, Rios told a reporter that he was once a square — a successful artist who leapt from an education at the San Francisco Art Institute into the advertising world, but was lured into bohemianism by the seductive glow of the tangled artwork that he saw appearing on the streets of San Francisco.
He pulls out another print — a flock of birds moving across a plain background — simple, and almost Japanese. It doesn’t look like anything else here. He studies it. After a minute he says, “Sometimes I surprise even myself.”
The future is looming large. Rios and the contents of the garage are supposed to be out by the end of the month, and he’s still trying to find a home for either.
Still, he says, it hasn’t exactly been a loss.
“The guy was generous in providing me with a place to live all these years. I got to do all this beautiful work.”
Michael Rios is having a show and gallery sale on February 17 at Medjool, 5:30-9 p.m.
See, Medjool can be a useful part of the neighborhood
You can see a wonderful example of Michael’s work in the interior of the BofA at Mission & 23rd. I saw the work in progress and attended the opening in 1974, handing out the artist statement by Michael and Chuy Campusano.