Canyon scenes and music dreams

Series explores 1960s counter-culture

‘The Day the Music Died’, Charles City Arts Center

Aug. 5-26; Gallery opening tonight, 5-7 p.m.

By Kate Hayden | khayden@charlescitypress.com

Visitors to the Charles City Arts Center will experience a unique throwback tonight as they go through Matt Borger’s show.

“It’s a visual history of the 1960s, the group of people in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles –– the birth of the hippie movement with David Crosby, Jim Morrison, (etc.),” Borger, a graphic artist by trade, said. “It’s an area where in the early 60s a lot of musicians like Frank Zappa, the Mamas and the Papas lived…all the musicians who kind of started the hippie scene all lived within this area.”

Borger’s acrylic-and-newspaper collages –– between 20 to 30 pieces on display tonight –– are a kind of tribute to the research done by his deceased friend David McGowan in the book “Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart of the Hippie Dream,” published in 2014. McGowan died last year of cancer.

Borger started the series back in January as he was reading, he said.

“I work on the computer a lot, so I wanted to do something off the computer,” Borger said. “I like to do work in a series, so I can do 20 to 30 pieces that have relationships with each other.”

He finished the latest piece in the series Monday night.

“I had it kind of done, but I had to add things to it,” Borger admitted. “The bigger ones take a little bit of time.”

The pieces include hidden references to other people and events the featured artist is connected to –– from national news, to active cults and pop culture references from the time period.

“You’ve got to get closer to the work to see more information,” Borger said. “You can spend a little bit of time looking at everything, what’s going on. The racial tensions, Vietnam, just all the stuff like that…it’s pretty amazing how much went on in that time.”

Borger grew up in Mason City –– close to where Buddy Holly’s fatal plane crash went down in Clear Lake –– and received his master’s degree in graphic design at the University of Iowa, just after the computer revolution took hold of the industry.

“They were still teaching the old-school ways, but within the next year that was gone because Photoshop came around,” Borger said. “I realized that I loved it, and it became my thing.”

Borger tries to keep painting or screen-printing projects on the side to stay challenged. This is his first solo exhibit in Charles City.

Charles City residents should keep an eye on the backgrounds –– a few pieces include original newspaper clippings from the 1960s, when his aunt was a reporter.

“When she died there were these boxes of newspapers, and I grabbed those and thought it might be used for something,” Borger said. “Some of the papers saved had to do with the tornado…really small little scenes that show some of the devastation, they’re kind of returning home.”

-20160805-