Punk rage, different stage

It takes a bit of work to find photographer Edward Colver. He does not advertise or solicit work, doesn’t list his telephone number. Standing outside the locked building where he lives in downtown Los Angeles, there is no way to buzz his loft to request entry.

He can’t be reached by e-mail, as he has no computer. “I have this hatred of things with screens,” he says.

Colver is best known for his work from 1978 to ’93 photographing the Los Angeles punk-rock scene, music and life that retaliated, he says, against values of caste, greed and commercialization. He was drawn to the music for its intensity, its lack of hesitation and pretense, its raw, unfiltered expression of rage. Especially its rage.

It was, he says, a place for outcasts, and that made it a place for him, as much as the camera was a tool for him. He had been working in factories -- a toy manufacturer, coffee roasting plant, diesel engine plant -- but in the late 1970s, he picked up a girlfriend’s 35-millimeter camera and took a look at the world, pointed it at the music and clicked.

It became his voice, which emerges a bit louder this week with the showing of his first poster. It will be included in an exhibition of peace and antiwar posters titled, “Yo! What Happened to Peace?” -- words borrowed from a version of the rap song “Paid in Full” by Eric B. and Rakim.

The exhibition is an expanded version of a Tokyo show curated by Los Angeles artist and activist John Carr. A version of Carr’s “Block Bush’s War” piece, included in the show, portrays the president dressed in old football gear and holding a missile like a pigskin against a backdrop of fighter planes and the United States flag. It appeared on the Sept. 30, 2002, cover of the magazine The Nation.

“What we’re hoping to do is give a voice to the arts community,” Carr says. “It’s a very intelligent critique of what’s going on, addressing issues like the weapons of self-destruction, obviously a fabrication. It’s not just a band of idealists who aren’t really connected with reality.”

Carr, co-founder and executive director of konscious.com, a video website of art and activism, spent seven years with Sony as an art director and graphic artist working with artists such as Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and the Wu-Tang Clan.

Artists included in the show are painters, photographers, graphic designers, sculptors and illustrators. Many of them work in the music industry: Futura (Mo’ Wax artists), Shepard Fairey (Black Eyed Peas), Winston Smith (Dead Kennedys, Green Day), Firehouse (Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys), Kiku Yamaguchi (Mos Def, Wayne Wonder) and Eric Drooker (Rage Against the Machine). Drooker also has done numerous covers for the New Yorker.

Posters have long served as the artistic representation of social, political and antiwar movements, Carr says, citing the work of German artist John Heartfield, who changed his name from Helmut Herzfeld in protest of World War I and whose work was banned in Germany during Hitler’s reign.

“On the large scale,” says Carr, “we see art in all kinds of situations like large street protests, artists making the puppets and placards and things like that that really define the character of a demonstration.”

Illustrator Yuri Shimojo was driving through Kenya when the war in Iraq began. “I look out the window and see people with no water, no food, no school to learn,” she says. “Then I get to the hotel and see the war on BBC. It was like a fantasy game. What I thought about was greed and so much money being spent to kill people.”

Her poster was inspired by a black-and-white photograph of airplanes dropping bombs. Shimojo turned the planes into birds. Instead of dropping bombs, they were dropping what birds drop ... on a tank.

Colver’s piece shows a sculpture he made from an old wooden movie marquee box, rounded on top. Beneath the words “now showing” is an old American flag. Beneath the words, “coming soon” is a swastika contained by iron bars.

His photos of the punk-rock scene seem like “ancient history” now, he says. At age 54, he says his subject matter now is primarily music studios. His place of peace is his fourth-story loft, filled with antiques, plants, art, a pool table, embalming apparatus, a copy of “Alice in Wonderland” that belonged to his grandfather, plein-air landscapes on the wall. The lighting is carefully calculated and controlled to give a sense of serenity.

There is still, however, the rage.

“A lot of my life was sort of filtered through the antiwar and hippie movement, then the punk thing. There weren’t a lot of people who made that transition. I think it made me more aggressive politically,” he says.

Before the Gulf War, he created a sculpture from an antique wheelchair containing a person wrapped like a mummy in an American flag. He called it “Bound for Glory.”

“One of the things that art should do is make people think,” he says. “If you see some picture and hit the door and never think about it again, it’s sort of like, what was the purpose of that?”

Colver says he might become more involved in street art, presenting his views through posters. It’s an effective way to make a statement, he says, and, ironically, a good example is James Montgomery Flagg’s portrayal of Uncle Sam, looking and pointing straight ahead above the words, “I Want You For U.S. Army.”

Other artists expected to participate are: Christian Azul/Aerosol Warfare, Glenn Brooks, Buff Monster, Freddi C., Ben Collison, Robbie Conal, Jared Connor, Mike Davison, Jerome “G” Demuth, Doze, Dave Ellis, Genevieve Gauckler, Kyle Goen, Hugh Gran, Tiger J. Gushue, Kenji Hirata, Gary Houston/Voodoo Catbox, Juice Design, Lucky Bunny Visual Communications, Mika Machida, Magmo the Destroyer, Malleus, Man One, Poli Marichal, Mr. Mike, Nayce, Ray Noland/CRO, Davi Russo, Seripop, Alex Skramble, Roger Spence/Graphonic, Chuck Sperry/Firehouse, Seth Tobocman and Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca.

Some of the proceeds from poster sales will benefit the Citizen Soldier, a nonprofit group that advocates for soldiers and veterans. Prices range from $20 to $35.

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‘Yo! What Happened to Peace?’

What: Exhibition of peace and antiwar posters

Where: Transport Gallery, 1308 Factory Place, L.A.

When: Opens Friday. Opening reception Friday, 6-11 p.m. Hours: Saturday-Sunday, noon-5 p.m. Ends Feb. 1.

Info: (213) 623-4099 or www.transportgallery.com