Gary Grimshaw

Grimshaw was born on February 25, 1946, in Detroit, According to Kramer, "Grimshaw was the best artist in our neighborhood" and "We drew hot rod cars and he knew the secret of how to capture chrome, which made him the coolest to a Downriver greaser like me." He would drive his friends from the working class, mostly white Polish Catholic suburb of Lincoln Park to the more cosmopolitan areas around Wayne State University in Detroit, looking for "beatnik parties" and listening to jazz performers like John Coltrane on the car radio. an aircraft carrier stationed in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War, which sent aircraft on bombing raids over Vietnam. He was first exposed to psychedelic concert art when his ship was being repaired in the San Francisco Bay Area. While there, he visited two famous rock concert venues, the Avalon Ballroom and The Fillmore, and studied light show operators at work. He was discharged from the Navy in 1966, and returned to Detroit. ==Rock art and politics==

After Grimshaw's return to Detroit, promoter Russ Gibb hired him to perform light shows during rock performances at his new Grande Ballroom. Grimshaw designed the first poster for the Grande Ballroom, for a show on October 7, 1966, featuring the MC5 and billed as "A Dance Concert in the San Francisco Style". Grimshaw was active in the anti-war movement and was a leading figure in the White Panther Party, founded in 1968 by John Sinclair, his wife Leni Sinclair and Pun Plamondon. He was Minister of Art for the White Panther Party which modeled itself after the Black Panther Party. His work appeared in many newspapers of the underground press, including the San Francisco Oracle, the Berkeley Tribe, the Fifth Estate and the Ann Arbor Sun. Grimshaw had been convicted of displaying a "fifteen cent kite that had a dirty word lettered on it", and was sentenced to 15 days in jail and a $150.00 fine, but the court threw out his conviction and the Detroit ordinance, on the basis that it "unconstitutionally inhibits free speech". His political mentor John Sinclair was sent to prison on marijuana charges in 1969, and Grimshaw worked hard for his freedom. One of Grimshaw's most "memorable, iconic" posters promoted the John Sinclair Freedom Rally, ==Later years and death==

In 1988, Grimshaw designed the cover for Iggy Pop's album Instinct. In 1993, he designed a limited edition poster for the "Motor City Joint Show" at the Ubiquity Gallery in Ferndale, Michigan, highlighting work by Detroit poster artists Stanley Mouse, Wes Wilson, Mark Arminski and Grimshaw himself. During these years Grimshaw created posters for Beck, the White Stripes, The Greenhornes, the Dirtbombs and the Raveonettes, and for a 2004 tribute concert in memory of guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5. He lived in San Francisco and Oakland, California from 1990 to 2004, when he relocated back to Detroit. From 1988 to 1991, he was art director of ArtRock, a concert poster producer. ==References==