Alum Robbie Conal: The Godfather of Guerrilla Street Art

KCET-TV (BURBANK) -- At 71, Los Osos resident Robbie Conal is the self-described “grandpa of guerrilla street art.” His seriocomic posters skewer politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and other public figures with grotesque portraits and pun-laden slogans that toe the line between playful and pointed. Yet Conal, who has collaborated with the likes of Shepard Fairey and Mear One, said he didn’t originally set out to paper the streets of Southern California. “I never really wanted to make posters. At a certain point I felt compelled to make them,” he said. Conal looks back at three decades of pop culture commentary in a solo exhibition through February 19 at the Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo. Conal peddled marijuana, mushrooms and synthetic mescaline to put himself through San Francisco State and got kicked out of school just a couple credits shy of graduation in 1969 for taking part in student protests and headed to Canada.