Scene

In memory of David Sisk, a reprint of a classic feature on the longtime Chico artist

Chico has lost a giant in the local arts scene. David Sisk, better known as Sisko, died suddenly on March 21 while hiking in Upper Bidwell Park. He was 75.

There’s no better overview of the man and his work than a 2013 article in this newspaper by former Chico News & Review editor and longtime writer Robert Speer. What follows is an abbreviated version of that feature, beginning with the story of a piece of Sisko’s guerrilla art (a.k.a. “chimp art”) that was left on display in a vacant lot for nearly four years.

If you’ve walked past the longempty lot at First and Main streets in Chico, you may have noticed a metal pole, about 8 inches wide and by Robert Speer 12 feet high. Specifically, you may have robertspeer@ newsreview.com noticed that perched on the top of this pole The rest of is a cartoonish the story: To read the full version of this feature, search figure reminiscent of a Smurf

“World according to or a character out Sisko” at newsreview. of an R. Crumb com/chico. comic. He’s a funny little man cut from plywood and sitting cross-legged among the tree branches as if meditating, like some comical bodhisattva or Burmese forest monk.

People familiar with the art of David Sisk will recognize it as one of his whimsical “Sisko” figures, those odd little round and nearly featureless characters that seem to pop up everywhere in his eclectic work—on billboards, T-shirts and bolo ties, on cutout wall pieces and posters, and on furniture, paintings, postcards, pins and photographic assemblages. They are Sisk’s signature image, the imaginary alter ego of Sisko the artist, and they are emblematic of what makes his otherwise politically charged and spiritually challenging art so accessible and enjoyable.

His friend and fellow artist Bruce Ertle calls it “sort of an activist guerrilla type of art, but one he makes lots of fun, which enables him to slip in his message. It’s so

The world according to

“Judge and release” as one of his truisms. If you recognize David Sisk’s work, it’s probably because you’ve seen one or more of the 40 or so art billboards he’s painted over the years. He started working for the Jay B. Stott Co. in the mid-1970s, painting commercial billboards, but it was never comfortable for him. He’s afraid of heights, for one thing, and eventually, in 2000, he became sick from breathing paint fumes and had to quit. Some years later, the man who bought the company from Stott, Jim Moravec, saw some of Sisk’s artwork and got the notion that his unused billboards would make a good venue for it. Sisk’s artistic billboards began appearing soon after. At the time, Sisk was operating the now-closed Drive-by Gallery on Seventh Street between Broadway and Main. While exhibiting artwork in the gallery’s large windows, he and other artists—including, at times, his son and daughter—were using the rest of the gallery as studio space. By nature, Sisk says, he’s an introvert. He once described himself to a reporter as a “sociophobic exhiharmless and appealing you boards would look like bitionist,” a phrase that describes don’t realize you’re being told don’t realize you’re being told in a big city. him fairly accurately. He says his something—to stop and think something—to stop and think A photograph taken in New wife, who is a massage therapist, and reconsider. … And he has no desire to leave York, for example, includes a Sisko is the extrovert in the family, the

This Sisko character, an example the area where his family has lived billboard above a Red Lobster res- one who really enjoys engaging of his “chimp art,” sits atop that since the 1870s and where he grew taurant, with a blurred Yellow cab with people. “She gets me out of pole at the corner of First and Main up and went to school (Chico High, passing on the street. The billboard the house,” he said. They’ve been streets downtown. Chico State), and where he and his reiterates one of Sisk’s favorite tru- together nearly 40 years, have hit

“I’m not an art scholar, and sister, Claudia, care for their 95-year- isms by showing a man holding a some rough spots along the way, but there’s a lot I don’t know,” Ertle old mother. His son Jeb’s daughter, bucket of (very large) worms and now fit each other “like old shoes.” continued, “but with him I think we Olive Ayres Sisk, represents the fifth claiming, “Everybody’s got their Ertle said he thought one of the have an original.” generation of Sisks in Chico, and on own bucket of worms.” reasons Sisk’s art is so accessible her mother’s side is also a descen- Sisk is fond of such homemade is because “he’s not an egocentric David Sisk got much of his artistic dent of the late John Ayres, the long- maxims and often builds his art guy,” and there’s a childlike quality talent from his father, Marcus Sisk, time chairman of the Chico State Art around them. “Anything is pos- to his work, but “David is a very who loved to draw cartoon figures. Department after whom Ayres Hall sible” is another, as are “Nothing sophisticated guy in his thinking. … Indeed, Sisk has incorporated into is named. The Sisk roots go deep. isn’t sacred” and “Judge and He’s a very honest, open guy living his own work some of the styles On the other hand, he would release.” every moment.” and images he got from his father’s very much like to see some of his The last, he says, was suggested Sisk is acutely aware that, as he sketchbooks, which date from the billboard art reach other cities, even by his friend Ken Naas, a counselor put it, “the world is a gnarly place.” 1930s and ’40s. if it’s only virtually. Using photos in the Chico State Career Center. He wants to call attention to that

His father died young, at just 53, of big-city sites that he downloaded It’s impossible for people not to truth, but he doesn’t want to make after working his entire adult life for from the Internet, he’s cut in his judge others, Naas once told him. things worse. Why add to the sufPG&E. This convinced Sisk that he billboard images, juxtaposing them The important thing is to let go of fering? he asks. “Sisko,” he said, “didn’t want a career that sucked with the hyperactive city life pic- that judgment as soon as possible. speaking of both his alter ego and the life from me. … I didn’t want to tured in the photos, to create large To Sisk that sounded like fishing’s himself, the artist, “is light-hearted. wait to make art.” prints that suggest what his bill- “catch and release,” and he adopted He’s a respite.” Ω

And he has no desire to leave in a big city.

A photograph taken in New York, for example, includes a Sisko

David Sisk, aka Sisko.

PHOTO BY DENNIS WICKES

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