Thirty Year Itch

“Well, folks — I had fun doing this 4 U. Please … Read it. Cherish it. Show your grandchildren. Remind them of the faint glimmer of hope in Spokane … with some luck the glimmer will still be there. Someday when we need it more than now. Good luck + kill corporate bastards.”

That’s from Shit List: All-American Rag, a Reagan-era fanzine, one of many that have surfaced from shoeboxes and basement storage bins for Object Space’s upcoming “Punk Art Retrospective,” which begins this week as part of the Rapture Punk Rawk Reunion. It’s a flimsy, corner-stapled, dog-eared, photocopied and typewriter-typed little thing. It’s not pretty (aesthetically or grammatically), but it’s got something to say. Crammed in three front-and-back pages, “MAJOR” (Shit List’s editor) reams Reagan, talks about punk rock bands and demands that readers stay true to who they are.

That’s a pretty heavy list of shit for a hand-scrawled thing more than likely made in some teenage kid’s bedroom.

But it’s an attitude that Object Space operator Bruce Hormann — who was born and raised in Spokane Valley — wants to celebrate with the local-history-meets-punk-rock-art show.

Hormann says Spokane’s punk and underground music scene was for everyone who wasn’t accepted in high school or on the football field. Where kids like him could finally be themselves and speak up about what pissed them off. And when those kids vented, creativity happened: producing edgy art, social commentary and, of course, lots of punk rock.

“It had a radical message, a really critical, passionate message. And it was never in the mainstream,” he says. “I think that now, since we’re involved in a war and an economic crisis and this sort of cultural crisis, this stuff is really significant and comes out as something to be proud of.”

To celebrate that, Hormann and three other curators have gathered hundreds of relics of that underground scene from the 1970s on (including Portland and Seattle). Like any historical artifact, each piece is bagged, tagged and slated for display in museum-like fashion for the show.

So far, Hormann and his colleagues have over 300 pieces for the show. There are stacks of photos, images growing gauzy with age. Band shirts, stickers, buttons. Show posters chronicle the constantly shifting venue locations and club names: Blondie’s (now Judi’s Place), RU RED (near House of Charity), Club Café (above the Lamp Post), the Woman’s Club. (There were shows there?) And stacks of ’zines: Casserole, Zulu Rag, Transitional, Wavo Scenario.

“We had a great scene. We should be proud of ourselves,” Hormann says. “It’s kind of gone on and there is this strong independent culture now. Expressing yourself in different ways has become OK, but in 1983 I’d get chased through the streets and beaten up.”

Tom Froese, a Spokane native who now lives in Sonora, Calif., has multiple pencil drawings and paintings in the show — most of which have been contributed by people he didn’t even know still had his artwork.

“I’m happy to see people have kept them over the years,” he says. He sounds flattered.

In addition to being a favorite artist among local scenesters, Froese ran a performance art show called Cabaret from 1986-87 at the now-bulldozed 123 Arts Building and ran an underground venue called Plant World (around the corner from where Time Bomb sits now).

“Being creative, whether it’s great art or not, it proves that things live beyond what you think they might. It’s important to the culture,” he says. “When I was doing performance art, it made no difference if it was good or bad. I was just out there doing things.”

Hormann says that freedom to express is what has always made Spokane’s underground scene unique.

“It wasn’t just punks at a show — it was freaks. It was weirdos and different people doing their own thing. Everyone was their own unique individual,” Hormann says. “It’s not about some unified f---ing movement where everyone is this cookie-cutter person. Everyone is themselves — you’re always free to be that.”

“Punk Art Retrospective 197? – 2009” at Object Space, 1818 ½ E. Sprague Ave., from July 17–31. Artist reception: Thursday, July 23, from 5 pm until late. Gallery hours: Mon-Sat 4–9 pm. Call 340-3934.