Happy 2nd 25th Birthday (back in 1999), Spencer! This is a portrait of Spencer, swing personality, club manager, speakeasy founder and DJ, sitting in 'Spencer's corner' at the HiBall swing night club in San Francisco. Spencer was an integral and important part of the San Francisco swing scene in the late 1990s, playing the perfect consistent DJ set of classic swing dance music, and always ending the night with "and it's not goodbye, just so long.." or something like that, accompanied by Frank Sinatra's Night & Day. Besides DJing at the HiBall he also ran and DJ'd his own late night "Spencer's" speakeasy every Saturday at the back of the DNA Lounge.

I have just heard that Spencer is now unwell and facing medical bills and there is a community-wide effort to help raise funds for him in this difficult time (see www.helpspencer.com). As my contribution and in appreciation of all the many hours of joy he gave to myself and other swing dancers, I will be happy to make signed fine art prints on heavy weight paper, with an image size of approximately 24 inches in the longest dimension, of either of the two images shown on this page, with proceeds going to the Help Spencer fund. If you wish to purchase a 24 inch signed print please send a check made payable to Sutton Studios & Gallery for $119.50 (which includes sales tax and postage) to Sutton Studios & Gallery, 1890 Bryant Street, Suite 306, San Francisco CA 94110. Please allow two weeks for delivery of your print since I print each one out individually.

The basis of this portrait is two photos I took of Spencer using 100 ASA Fuji film and an Olympus Stylus camera. I used MetaCreations Painter 5.5 software on a Macintosh PowerPC 9500 / 132 (208 MB RAM, 2 GB hard drive) with a Wacom ArtZ tablet and stylus.

This is a montage portrait of the HiBall swing night club in the North Beach district of San Francisco, where swing clubs and sex clubs nudge up next to eachother like two parallel universes. Barman/manager Tobias, singer Connie Champagne and swing character Spencer make appearances in this image. The source photographic material came from a late night visit to the HiBall when I took a series of photos using 100 ASA Fuji film in an Olympus Stylus camera. I used MetaCreations Painter 5.5 software on a Macintosh PowerPC 9500 / 132 (208 MB RAM, 2 GB hard drive), with a Wacom ArtZ tablet and stylus, to manipulate and collage the photos.

Here's a small example of the detail that contained within this image:

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