I’ve known Mark The Cobra Snake since he was 17. He sent me a really funny letter with photos of creative and subversive things he had done with my images. One of them I especially liked was an “Obey totem pole” he had made that basically consisted of glueing my images all over an extremely heavy object and rolling it on a skateboard to the 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica to be left as an annoyingly heavy propaganda object. I was impressed by the psychology and ingenuity of this endeavor… if putting the totem pole there took slightly more effort than anyone was willing to put into removing it, then the object and propaganda would triumph. Mark asked me if he could come poster bombing with me sometime. I liked his energy and drove to Santa Monica to meet his mom. We had a good time postering and Mark soon became my first assistant (not my top assistant out of several, but actually the first one I ever had). I think that seeing my design studio and underground art dissemination played a part in Mark starting his website. We all want to earn a living doing mischief we want to do anyway, and Mark is no exception, other than that he’s been better at it than most. I’ll be DJ’ing his store opening Tues. night and there will also ATTENTION be a limited number of my prints pulled from my personal archive that are sold out on the internet. I’m sure Mark will have all sorts of random treasures he’s collected and curated. Check it out.
-Shepard

The Cobra Shop
Hollywood and Highland, 4th Floor
Opening Tuesday, June 8th, 6-9pm
RSVP at [email protected]