For All the Dopesick San Francisco (DSF) Haters (Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail art by IUOMA member Dopesick San Francisco aka Michael Kelly (Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA)

July 17, 2015 - A few years ago I started seeing work by Dopesick San Francisco (DSF) posted online. I was impressed, a little perplexed and have since become a diehard fan. In my estimation, art by DSF is sophisticated, ironic and intelligent. Sure, there is the façade of moronic crudeness and Artaudian ultra-violence; that is what makes the Punk aesthetic so great. That’s why DSF is so great and one of the best anti-art slingers in the contemporary network.

I was convinced right away this guy knew what he was doing (or had made ineptness a form of genius), and he must have honed his skills somewhere. DSF clearly came out of a Punk or post-Punk milieu and had absorbed the anti-art stance brilliantly – the one that can be traced back to DaDa. After all, Punk and mail art were once deeply intertwined. Jon Foster (North Carolina, USA) explored these roots in his own Punk mail art revival not long ago.

The DSF vision might seem anachronistic in a time when we refer to folk art strains in mail art. The in-your-face vomit-on-Xerox-machine tactics of the Punk mail artists have been abandoned (except maybe Moan Lisa). Yet DSF is neither reactionary nor nostalgia act. The Punk presence in the art seems natural and effortless. He updates the classic tropes with street art and popcult infusions.

The perplexed part mentioned earlier came from not knowing anything about DSF. I know the Punk Era folks pretty well. Today, I do not know much more about DSF than I did when I first became a fan, except that his name is Michael Kelly. He is on the East Coast, not the West. He actually sent me this postcard-size piece, and I am thrilled.

DSF aka Michael Kelly remains mostly a mystery. He is on Facebook and has a lot of friends. He does, indeed, seem to have some sort of connection to music. He even has a DSF-Dharma Punx T-shirt for sale. So he must be somebody who came from somewhere. Take a look at his work:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/66141016@N05/sets/72157627276844617

DSF/Michael Kelly is currently receiving some interest from the Trashpo crew, not that he needs a larger audience, but because what he is doing with anti-art is innovative enough to be instructive to Kulters and trashpoets. I am thrilled to have some of his work for the archives. Many thanks!

Also find DSF on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000526479966&fref=ts