THOBEY CAMPION: Hey, this is Thobey.
We're in North Beach, San Francisco, right now to meet
up with legendary artist, Winston Smith.
WINSTON SMITH: [INAUDIBLE] later.
THOBEY CAMPION: Pleasure to meet you, Thobey.
WINSTON SMITH: Thobey, good to meet you.
Yeah, that's it.
It's like awesome, two worlds.
THOBEY CAMPION: Thank you.
So this is it?
WINSTON SMITH: Welcome to Grant's Tomb.
We're right under Grant Avenue.
So this is mainly my work that I've had up for a show, and
then I generally pull curtains across so people don't have to
look at my chaotic studio part.
I was born in Oklahoma.
Then when I was a teenager, I had the brilliant idea to go
to art school.
And went to study Renaissance art in Florence.
My mom's a painter and a sculptress--
really talented.
And I didn't, unfortunately, inherit her skills.
I can sketch and draw, if I wanted to, really well-- but
usually too much effort.
So it's easier to cut up other people's
drawings and use those.
And I kind of discovered the medium of collage.
Before there were photocopy machines, I
would make my own drawings.
And then realized if I cut them I could mix them together
and come up with really absurdist compositions that
were startling.
And once I did see a photocopy machine, I
think Xerox or Olivetti.
In Italy we had Olivetti.
And that kind of changed everything.
Because you could rearrange pictures together, photocopy
it, and it would make them all look like one unit.
At that time, and for a long, long time afterward, whenever
I would present this work or composition, especially for
commercial work like illustration for a magazine,
the art directors would say well, it's not a painting, and
it's not a photograph, so what is it?
So I'm trying to create instant surrealism
that you could get.
I could take a bunch of completely normal things and
put them together and they're not right.
The [INAUDIBLE] one time said you take things that are all
wrong, put them together and suddenly make them right.
That's a piece we used for a Dead Kennedy's
record in the middle.
Mowing down the people, it was on the inside of a record.
THOBEY CAMPION: Do you ever have brushes with the law or
calls from authorities about any of your work?
WINSTON SMITH: No I think I'm either so much under the radar
or they probably figure oh, let him keep doing that.
That way he won't cause any real trouble.
He's just an artist.
THOBEY CAMPION: A lot of articles talk about you coming
back to the States after being away for six
years or so was a real--
WINSTON SMITH: Culture shock, yeah.
When I first arrived in America, I had two friends who
lived here, one who lived in Boston--
New York and Boston, he moved to Boston-- and then one
friend who lived out in San Francisco.
The part of Boston I lived in was right
by the Charles River.
The shock was that there were TV cameras everywhere.
Not just at banks and office buildings, but at donut shops.
And these little cameras would follow you around.
And like son of a bitch, it's like Orwell.
THOBEY CAMPION: So you were in Boston then.
And then how did you get over to San Francisco?
WINSTON SMITH: I hitchhiked across the country.
San Francisco was full of energy.
It's a small city, it's only seven miles across so you can
walk around.
In fact, there was a bus strike for a couple of weeks
and I did have to walk around everywhere to find anything.
Where I would up working was like a rent a roadie joint
working for different bands like the Tubes, Crosby, Stills
and Nash, Santana, Journey.
A bunch of other local bands would come in and perform at
our sound stages.
I did run into lots of interesting
people in that industry.
And it was right just before punk rock had begun to rear
its ugly head.
THOBEY CAMPION: So what year span are we talking right now?
WINSTON SMITH: '76 and '77.
A lot of places wouldn't book punk bands at that time
because of too much trouble.
The insurance wouldn't cover the place if the windows got
broken or someone got hurt.
And that's why punk rock, I think, was born.
Because so many people who didn't want to perform were
kind of pissed off that all there was was these giant
stadium bands.
All there was was just big show business stuff.
And punk rock was about no, just get up on stage in the
corner of someone's room in a basement someplace.
San Francisco was more of an art movement
for the punk scene.
Because there were people who were artists that couldn't
play anything, but they'd perform and
they'd have an act.
Usually it was funny or it was absurd, it was something
interesting.
THOBEY CAMPION: You mentioned in some interviews about that
time and the spirit that infused the music and the art
was kind of resemblant of Dadaism.
WINSTON SMITH: Totally.
Advertising here doesn't take the form so much of TV ads, or
radio, or billboards--
it's posters.
And we had the opportunity because people have to walk
around to put posters or propaganda for a band, or for
anything really, on the walls that you'd have to see if you
were waiting for the bus service or
walking down the block.
Sometimes I'd see these and I'd think
well, I could do that.
I don't think I can do better, but I could do
something like that.
And I didn't know a lot of the people in the current scene
that was coming up.
I didn't know people in bands.
So I just made up my own punk bands and put up posters for
like The Twits--
nonexistent bands.
There was no Kinko's then, you had to go to the Rexall and
put a dime in the thing.
Or we'd go to the public library and there's be a
Olivetti machine or a Xerox machine.
You could do whole 'zines at Rexall.
One of these was--
the people must believe that they are not manipulated in
order for them to be manipulated effectively.
That turned into a compilation album.
THOBEY CAMPION: The name Dead Kennedys I think inspired how
you first reached out to Jello?
WINSTON SMITH: We're kind of at the same age.
He's a few years younger than me.
So I have a vivid memories of JFK's assassination as an
11-year-old, as a teenager, and what that did to the rest
of society.
THOBEY CAMPION: Your career, there's been points where
people will have reacted to your work negatively, and
sometimes extremely negatively.
And I think that the example that yeah, you pointed across
there, I think that the Pat Robertson 700 Club instance
was an interesting one.
WINSTON SMITH: We used a picture I had done a few years
before for a Dead Kennedy's record, it was an EP.
My piece was a cross of American dollars with a Jesus
on a cross.
It was about greed and religion and corruption and
essentially how money controls things, how
people worship money.
It wasn't really very profound.
So we used it for the record.
And then in Great Britain they banned the record cover and
big posters up in the window, like table-size posters, from
record shops.
Because people complained because
they said it was heresy.
Which meant they took the records out of the shops.
And Biafra thought it was horrible.
This is terrible publicity!
And I was going, no, it's great!
There's no such thing as bad publicity!
You should write the cops a check.
You should send them a thank you note.
THOBEY CAMPION: Have you always had a purpose, either
political or social, with your work?
WINSTON SMITH: No.
THOBEY CAMPION: Thank God.
WINSTON SMITH: Yeah.
Sometimes a lot of things I have I'll put together because
they look funny, or interesting, or kind of
intriguing, or enigmatic that way.
THOBEY CAMPION: Some of your work has a definite intent.
One of the pieces that gets brought up a lot is the baby
being fed by the--
WINSTON SMITH: Oh, the bomb.
THOBEY CAMPION: The bomb.
WINSTON SMITH: Baby and the bomb.
Force-fed war.
That was about when Ronald Reagan was
President in '82 or '83.
And he cut-off the school lunch program for children,
which sometimes was the only meal they had in a day, and
give all the money to the Pentagon.
The best thing about that rocket that the baby is being
fed, the real thing on the tail said 666 DBH or some
other code number.
I just had to blackout the code number and the 666 was
already there.
THOBEY CAMPION: What drives you?
Is it frustration that drives you to continue to be working
like 59 years?
WINSTON SMITH: That actually is a good motivator.
A lot of it is just the desire to put what is subconscious
onto paper.
We have a responsibility as artists to express ourselves.
I think.
Even us, we might change our mind 10 or 20 years later, and
go oh, you know, I could be wrong about that.
Now I see it differently.