For a guy whose art adorns a blockbuster music album that’s sold 30 million copies worldwide, artist Michael Rios is a pretty chill dude. Sitting in his studio in the historic Noonan Building in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, he’d much rather pluck at his hand-painted guitar than talk about his journey through art.
But whether he talks about it or not, Rios’ career is prolific – from becoming one of the first-ever artists to paint a mural in San Francisco’s Mission District to creating the art for pal Carlos Santana’s zillion-selling Supernatural album. He even did the art for an M&M campaign, inspired by an experience he had on LSD.
“They titled it groovy summer,” he laughed.
A new gallery exhibit in the Marlowe Gallery in Union Square does the talking for Rios, featuring dozens of color-drenched paintings he’s made over the many decades he’s been an artist.
“You always see so much on the Santana album,” said Marlowe Gallery owner Malik Seneferu. “But when you walk into a space you get the world of Mike Rios.”
The artistic universe of Rios stretches over many decades. Born in Oakland, he lost his mother when he was 6 years old and went to live with his grandparents in a poor upbringing. Even in a childhood of instability, he already knew he wanted to become an artist. He was still in high school when he hit up Richard Stephens, president of the San Francisco Academy of Art for a scholarship to attend the school.
“He said, ‘Well, take up the broom and sweep up after the day classes and that’ll be your tuition for whatever classes you want to take at night,‘” Rios recalled.
In his final year of high school, Rios spent more time in art school than in actual high school. By the time he graduated, he had a portfolio of work which he started peddling in order to get commercial jobs. His first gig was as an assistant for an artist at the Roos/Atkins clothing store. A short time later he and a couple friends started their own illustration and design studio. Rios did jobs like illustrating books or making brochures for banks. Soon the work began to feel like an artistic jail.
“I just got burned out doing commercial art and I told my two partners I think I want to bail out of this partnership of ours,” Rios said. “I just want to go back to art school and be more of a fine artist.”
Rios developed his artistic voice against the backdrop of the Summer of Love and the explosion of music and drugs in the ’60s Haight-Ashbury. Bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were the soundtrack to his own cultural renaissance. But that bubble burst for Rios when he and a friend attended the infamous 1969 Altamont Speedway Free Festival, where the Hells Angel’s security detail fatally stabbed a young African American concert goer.
“Sort of like a day out of hell,” he remembered.
For Rios, that incident, coupled with the Vietnam War, spelled an end for the era of peace and love. He was disillusioned walking around the Mission District when he saw inspiration all around him in the form of walls and billboards.
“So many of these walls in the Mission were saturated with billboards that were selling liquor or cigarettes,” Rios said.
In 1971, Rios made a sketch depicting several cartoon-like images of life in San Francisco and painted them on a wall in the neighborhood. He believes it was the first mural in a neighborhood now known for colorful murals. His first offering stirred up a bit of controversy when he depicted police with the face of pigs. One night he heard from someone who witnessed officers in a police cruiser throwing paint at his wall.
“My thing was to do relevant art on walls that would be educational and inspire kids,” Rios said.
Rios went on to paint numerous murals around the Mission neighborhood, including a massive building-size mural in tribute to musician Carlos Santana that would foretell a significant relationship in his artistic life. He also painted a mural inside a Bank of America at 23rd and Mission and a wall adjacent to the 24th and Mission BART Station. Those two murals are still there.
Rios’ artistic style was far from minimalist, imbued with the bright frenetic colors of the psychedelic ’60s and cultural influences of Mexican art. His palette caught the attention of Michael Shrieve, drummer for Santana who in the 1980s hit up Rios to paint a set of drums. Shrieve’s boss, Carlos Santana, liked the custom job and himself asked Rios to paint one of his guitars.
“He said, ‘What do you want for payment?’” Rios said. “I said, ‘Well, I don’t want any money, but I’d be happy to receive one of your paint brushes over there.’”
Santana’s paint brush was of course a guitar. When Rios showed up the next day, Santana presented Rios with one of his Paul Reed Smith guitars. Rios went on to paint numerous guitars for the musician and also several large stage backdrops for the touring band. One of those backdrops became the album cover for Supernatural, Santana’s massive hit album that relaunched his own career and collaterally thrust Rios’ art onto a bigger stage. The pair still exchange text messages and phone calls regularly.
“I feel I have that kind of association with Carlos Santana. His music is so evocative, so mind-blowing,” Rios said. “I want my art to do the same thing when people see it.”
A quick tour around Rios’ exhibition in the Marlowe Gallery reveals his prolific nature. Dozens of paintings fill two floors of galleries, with dozens more still back in his studio. Art is central to his existence.
“Making art for me is magical,” Rios said. “From a blank paper of nothing becomes something.”
There are many somethings in Rios’ wheelhouse. These days, in addition to paintings, he silkscreens T-shirts emblazoned with psychedelic visages of Santana, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley, among others. Inside his studio, he leaned back in a chair and strummed a tune on the Fender Stratocaster he painted with an image of his pal Santana. Like the tubes of an amplifier, once he warms up, Rios happily talks about music and art. In the end, they’re all painted with the same brush.
“The final result is always fun to say, ‘Ah, man, I can’t believe I did this,’” Rios said.
Source: NBC Bay Area