I am a big fan of Rigo.
I met him a couple years ago when I was helping Charles Linder. I had borrowed my dad’s Mitsubishi van to help Charles and Rigo move a bunch of panels that were part of a pubic art installation on Market in SF. What is notable about that day is that the three of us were sitting in Muddy Waters cafe in the Mission and Charles jumped up screaming “that’s my bike” and ran out the door. I ran for the van and pulled a U-ey and caught up to Charles –at full sprint — and a bicyclist a couple hundred yards up (south) Mission. I cut the bike off just as Charles had overtaken the rider. Charles grabbed the bike by the handlebars and said “This is my bike!”. He pulled about 50 dollars from his wallet and forced the exchange on the biker, who said he had bought at a flea market. The bike was handmade of zinc. It took an amazing combination of an artist’s eye and an athletes prowess to recover the bike like that — Charles had told me previously that he was a state finalist in high school track back in Alabama.

I dig the “one tree” and the “innercity home” Rigo stuff. I actually didn’t realize until it had been installed for a couple years and I finally sought it out that the San Jose State tribute to the 1968 Olympics — black gloves — was by Rigo.

Terry bought me a box set of Rigo chapbooks.

A recent trip to SFMOMA, maybe to see the Richard Serras, I caught about two minutes of this Rigo interview. Would love to see more of his work.

I saw a print of a similar shot of this at Pacific Art League and pulled this from my cell, from months prior:

edit to add, after blowing another half hour bouncing around or sufring:

I got a snap shot of the emerging art scene by hanging out at Charles Linder’s Refusalon, on Natoma, in the early 1990s, directly before starting Earthwise Productions as a concert entity, transitioning out of ad agency mindset. I recall Charles L came to an early show, maybe the Mudwimin.  But I only met Charles Linder because a former ad agency colleague set me up on a date with Jennifer Goldman whose brother Charles Goldman organized a show at Refusalon; it says that was 1994. Charles Goldman designed the first Earthwise logo, for a set of notecards that I had the press run twice because they printed it glossy when I wanted matte: I am still getting rid of those. Goldman deserves the full Plastic Alto treatment someday. (I remember taking Jennifer Goldman to the Prawn Song launch party so I guess I was sort of tracking music — more about I had met Lane Wurster randomly in 1991 than I was researching the local music scene).