Scott Williams

Mission Future Pattern 415

Scott Williams

Mission Future Pattern 415

Date

2020

Edition Size

unique

Media

Airbrush, Hand-painting, Stencil

Binding

Coptic

Format

Artist Book

Dimensions

11.25 × 8.5 × 1 in

Pages

98

Location

San Francisco, CA

$ 12,000.00

Unavailable


View Collectors

School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts

Mission Future Pattern 415 is one of the important personal sketchbooks/design encyclopedias of the GOAT Stencil Pirate Godfather Scott Williams. Started in 1989 and just finished at the height of the first Covid 19 lockdown, when Williams was losing his eyesight to the point where he could no longer cut stencils, the book is a unique, exceptional, and stunning work of human book production; it’s an illuminated manuscript that rivals any other and a veritable kaleidoscope documenting the specific sunlight of the California Coast and the culture that sunlight seeded, and still sustains, as one of the most creatively active loci of human cultural production. This book was one of the last available unique illuminated manuscripts from Scott’s collection.

William’s intricate stencil cutting and the addition of microscopic iridescent glass beads to the paints (the same used for traffic marking paints) make for an almost impossible-to-photograph visual environment of numerous viewing perspectives adding to the already complicated tessellations that at times seem reminiscent of the genius of M. C. Escher.

Godfather of the street art based both in the San Francisco New Mission School and the Global Stencil Pirate movement, Scott Williams was the leading pioneer in the painterly expansion of stencil and airbrush media. The relentless intensity of William’s artwork compels you to see the way he sees, to think the way he thinks; his drawings draw you into his own parallel universe. Williams’ work is Pan-American in its roots and unique to California culture. It’s a hybrid mix of both Catholic and indigenous Mexican paper-cutting techniques, with the intelligence and sardonic commentary of Jose Guadalupe Posada, and the spice of modern Chicano aesthetics (Williams has lived in the Mission District of San Francisco for about 20 years). Throw in some beat, punk, and psychedelic San Francisco influences and you have an exceptionally original and potent aesthetic vernacular.

Note that the book was bound by well-loved and respected artist, and cultural organizer Carrie Galbraith (1956-2018, member of San Francisco Cacophony Society and author of “Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society”).