Via The San Francisco Chronicle - August 14, 2014
Anyone who has lived through the last two tempestuous decades in the Bay Area knows they bear remembering. So it somehow makes perfect, surreal sense that, in honor of North Beach artist Jeremy Fish's 20th anniversary in San Francisco, he would resuscitate his anthropomorphized familiars - this rapping grizzly and that skateboarding doggie - mashed up with the bay's enduring and ephemeral sights and signs. "I'm not a generally communicative man," Fish confesses by phone. "I have a small circle of friends. I'm not as social as I was. So it's the equivalent of a guy who bitches or cheers about stuff he loves or hates. I've found this is my voice. This is the way I can stand up and say, 'This is what I love or hate.' " We talked to Fish about "Yesterdays and Tomorrows."
Q: What made you want to revisit these images?
A: Everything I make starts out as an 11-by-14 pen-and-ink drawing on Bristol board since I've been living here. At some point, when I had thousands of them, I thought it would be cool to fill a room with these. I moved here in August 1994 to go the Art Institute, and (FFDG's director and curator John Trippe and I) both worked at the same skateboard magazine ("Slap"). Why not do it at my friend's gallery after 20 years in this city?
