3 minute read
Blue Bears and Burgers
Blue Bears and Burgers
From commercial artist to recognizable muralist to animator, Sirron Norris is an all-around artist who only continues to grow.
BY GRACE HENDRICKS
Maybe you recognize his cartoons from his murals around San Francisco. Or maybe you recognize his style from the hit animated television show, Bob’s Burgers. Wherever you recognize his work, Sirron Norris (sirronnorris.com) has established himself as a prominent San Francisco commercial artist whose art not only decorates the city, but in many cases, tells its story.
Originally from Cleveland, Norris moved to San Francisco in 1994 after graduating from art school. He knew he wanted to become a commercial artist and he wanted to move to a place where he believed he could develop his artistic career without encountering the racism and limitations he had experienced in Ohio. “I didn’t know much about the US,” Norris remembered, but from the little he had heard about San Francisco, it sounded like where he wanted to be— and he hasn’t left since.
When he first moved, Norris landed in the Mission District, in the heart of one of the most renowned areas for murals in San Francisco and in the heart of one of the neighborhoods most severely struck by gentrification. Shortly after he arrived, Norris began a job at a company that created children’s educational software.
The company developed video games to teach children math and English through the use of familiar licensed characters, including those from Super Mario Bros. and Dr. Seuss. While working at this job, Norris practiced and witnessed the power of using familiar cartoon characters to tell a story and convey a message.
At this job, the deadlines were tight and the hours were long, often pushing 60 hours per week. After work, Norris would return home, where he would paint. These paintings became a form of release for him, like “a diary,” he remarked. Norris further explained, “[They] were autobiographical pieces of my life at that time.
I would do one painting per month and [the painting] would show what happened to me in that month, speaking through these cartoon characters.” His paintings, in addition to his job at the children’s educational software company, eventually inspired him to develop his own form of visual communication, which he defined as “Cartoon Literalism.”
Cartoon Literalism allowed Norris to create “a visual language based off of cartoon characters that are familiar to everyone.” For instance, everyone has seen cartoon bears, rabbits, and dogs, so Norris transformed each of these characters into a “distilled-down” visual metaphor that could be used to tell a story and communicate a truth.
One of his most iconic characters is his blue bear, which to Norris, represents love in its duality: “Bears can be cute teddy bears or tough grizzly bears.” Similar to the way love can be wonderful or painful. Eventually, he established a specific meaning for each of his cartoon characters, so that when the characters interacted with each other in a painting, “it [could] be read as a sentence” and a story.
Read more at https://issuu.com/rareluxuryliving/docs/troora_san_francisco_2021_pages/196
