Cannthropology
WORLD OF CANNABIS PRESENTS
Throughout modern history, countless artists and musicians have used marijuana to help enhance their creativity … but far fewer have actually featured it as their subject matter. Many of those who did helped forge new genres of “degenerate” art—like jazz, comic books and concert posters—that
44
would eventually establish them as counterculture icons. One such artist is Pat Ryan.
CANNABIS AMERICANA
Celebrating the weed-infused work of underground art icon Pat Ryan
EARLY LIFE
Raised in suburban Long Island, Paul Ryan heard his artistic calling early— beginning to paint and draw cartoons by the age of eight. A born rebel, Ryan became enamored with Mad magazine, whose irreverent satire was “exposing the shortcomings of the Leave it to Beaver generation of Americans becoming homogenized.” He spent his teenage years in the jazz clubs and coffeehouses of Greenwich Village—getting into Dylan, Kerouac and Ginsberg. Then in 1962, Ryan moved out to Hermosa Beach, where he discovered the SoCal surfer scene, weed and psychedelics. After working as an art director for an ad agency across the street from the Whiskey a Go-Go and taking lots of acid, he soon grew disillusioned by the phony LA scene and wanted out.
neleafmag.COM
BEST BUDS
In 1971, Ryan moved up to Marin County, where he opened a tiny studio and jumped headfirst into the area’s art scene. Within months he met a kindred soul who would become his best friend and partner for the next decade—comic artist Dave Sheridan. Ryan moved into Sheridan’s studio, and the two formed a company called C.O.D. (Consistently Over Drawn!) Grafix and began cranking out content. Sheridan created the comic character Dealer McDope and collaborated with Gilbert Shelton and Paul Mavrides on the cult classic The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers; Ryan produced a series of Native American-themed paintings and a comic about hitchhiking called Hit the Road (1972), which Sheridan helped him get published. In 1974, the doobious duo relocated into a large building in San Rafael that served as a collective studio space for local artists, including rock poster
DEC. 2020
greats Alton Kelley, Stanley ‘Mouse’ Miller and Victor Moscoso. Officially named the Concrete Foundation of Fine Arts, the collective was better known by its nutty nickname: the Peanut Gallery. To raise money for rent each month, the Peanut Gallery threw huge parties dubbed the “Black Death Parties”—named after the Black Death beer Sheridan brewed.
THE CANNABIS HOMEGROWERS ASSOCIATION
During these salad days at the Gallery, the two partners came up with the idea for a series of marijuana brand label parodies they called the California Homegrowers Association. “We’d sit around smoking joints and coming up with fictitious brand names,” Ryan recalls. “We made a whole list of them … that’s what became the California Homegrowers Association.” Some of the iconic phony brands they created included Harvest Moon, Sticky Fingers, High Society and Space City—each of which was President Reagan illustrated with a humorous charm launched his notorious inspired by the well-known Califor“Just Say No” anti-drug nia agricultural labels of the day. They planned to use the images campaign, leading to to market a line of merchandise to the closing of stoners all over America via head head shops across shops and ads they placed in High the country and Times magazine. Unfortunately, kneecapping their however, the products hit the market dream before it had a in 1982 just as President Reagan chance to take off. launched his notorious “Just Say No”
