Interview by Caitlin Donohue. From SCENE: The Guardian Guide to Nightlife and Glamour — on stands in the Guardian now!
“When you walk into a room in San Francisco, half the people in there are going to know who I am — or at least the bear,” says “cartoon literalism” artist (and palindrome) Sirron Norris. Norris may be right about his citywide ubiquity. The friendly blue bears and pink rabbits that frolic through his Technicolor streetscapes are probably brightening up a wall near you, from Balmy Alley to the neighborhood cheesesteak restaurant. But the lightheartedness of Norris’ popular work belies an artist with an intense drive to be commercially viable in the increasingly barebones world of art. Upcoming projects include Bob’s Burgers, an animated series on Fox, and a studio at 1406 Valencia where he’ll hawk his own work and teach cartooning classes — even a proposed reality show. Ever opinionated, Norris pulls no punches when it comes to taggers, the Mission anti-gentrification movement, and the value of commercialism.
SFBG How did you get started in the SF art scene?
SIRRON NORRIS I fell into fine art. I’d never planned on it at all. I was making video games at a software development company in San Rafael and painting on the side out of frustration. I was doing these canvases on my own and [one day] I took them down to Luggage Space, which was the hot gallery at the time. A few months later, I had a show.
SFBG I think, given the aesthetic of your work, a lot of people would be surprised to find out that you don’t come from a graffiti background.
SN I have a huge disdain for graffiti. My murals have been ripped apart by it. I exercise a lot and the main reason I started is honestly because I wanted to stay up super-late at night and run around with a baseball bat and find [taggers]. People don’t understand when they ruin my murals how hurtful that is. You are stealing that artist’s life away from them. And for what — you want people to notice you? I just think that it’s sad and self-indulgent. I’m an artist too, but when [someone tags a wall] it’s gonna be their name, or an elaborate form of their name, or their crew. It’s not like the murals, where we’re trying to tell some rich indigenous history or something about apartheid.