Bovey exhibit at the MAC aims to bring permanence to Spokane’s history

Chris Bovey’s vintage prints of Spokane landmarks aren’t just a trip down memory lane. He seeks to make his art a vehicle for documenting our changing city.

One example he points to is his print of The Shack, a favorite Spokane eatery that closed in 2003 after 70 years in business.

“That place doesn’t exist anymore,” Bovey said. “Hopefully something like this (print) will live on forever.”

Bovey compares his artistic mission to that of famed Spokane photographer Charles A. Libby, who captured thousands of images of people and places in Spokane during the first half of the last century. Libby’s photographs have inspired and informed generations.

“I think of (my art) like a historian does, with a historian’s eye,” Bovey said. “I’m not trying to pass it off as fine art.”

Yet as proof of his work’s fine art status, Bovey opens his first-ever museum show at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture this Saturday: “My Spokane: A Vintage Look at Spokane Through the Screen Prints of Chris Bovey.”

He will exhibit 30 Spokane-centric pieces from his Vintage Prints collection. From the Davenport and The Spokesman-Review building to the garbage-eating goat and Dick’s Hamburgers, the show is likely to strike a chord with every Spokane resident.

Bovey has mounted several gallery shows and sells his work at local festivals, bazaars and gift shops. But exhibiting at the MAC feels momentous, he said.

“I’ve never shown before to the fine art crowd, who judge with a different eye, so I’m terrified on that level,” Bovey said.

“I think of it more as pop art,” said MAC Interim Executive Director John Moredo-Burich. “Bovey has said he wants to make art affordable for the masses so everybody can own a piece of Spokane. … His art symbolizes what we hold dear about our town.”

Adding to the documentary nature of the show, each Bovey print will appear alongside a photograph from the Charles Libby Collection in the Joel E. Ferris Research Library and Archives. Each print and photo will be accompanied by a label with a brief story about why Bovey chose the image, and what each place means to him and to Spokane.

Artists understand that printmaking is a fine art. Bovey’s prints are all handmade, and thus each unique. When working for himself, his artistic choices, from digital manipulations to color, are purely aesthetic, without concern for commercial or client purposes.

After completing a set of print editions, he permanently obliterates all the original screens by wiping them clean. He also avoids ever using the same color combination for any future versions of an already depicted landmark.

Bovey, 36, is himself a Spokane original. More or less. He was born in Australia, and moved to Spokane with his Aussie dad and American mom when he was 9. Raised on the South Hill, he was kicked out of Lewis and Clark High School for “goofing off” before eventually graduating from North Central. He worked at what he describes as a soul-crushing job at Microsoft in Bellevue for a few years before ditching it all to return to Spokane. He eventually landed the role of art director at the Inlander, where he worked for nearly 10 years. In 2013, he started Spokane Vintage Prints, and earlier this year he took a leap of faith and quit the alternative weekly to expand his own growing art business.

“It was a huge risk,” Bovey said. “I’m a religious person and I give all credit and glory to God.”

Bovey works part time as the children’s pastor for his church in Airway Heights. Religion is a major part of his life now, but Bovey said he used to be on the “bad path,” drinking and doing drugs.

“Honestly, I changed for my kids,” Bovey said. “I want them to have a good role model to grow up with, so they can always say their dad is sober and he’s got a job.”

Bovey now lives with his wife, two young sons, two dogs and chickens on 10 acres in Medical Lake. His mother-in-law resides in a mobile home behind the house.

On a recent evening, Bovey’s family and a visiting neighbor were gathered around the kitchen table, laughing and playing cards when he returned from his job at church. He changed into his paint-stained pajama pants and T-shirt and invited this reporter to follow him into the laundry room.

“Let’s go make some screen prints,” he said, padding barefoot into the kitchen.

Bovey shares his cramped workspace with his family’s washer and dryer and recycling bins. It’s a basic mudroom off the kitchen. Layers of dried paint speckle the counters, walls and floor. “This is the worst room in the house,” Bovey’s wife, Liz, said.

But it’s where the magic happens. Using a Yudu screen printing machine, he soaks a screen in photo emulsion and exposes it to UV light for 10 minutes, transforming the mesh into a stencil. He then lines up his paper under the stencil, pours his chosen color on top of the screen and spreads the ink with a squeegee. Finally, he hangs the paper up to dry. He can hang up to 100 posters at a time. For that purpose, strings and clothespins litter the kitchen.

Bovey has to wait for the ink to dry completely and create another stencil with a screen and emulsifier before applying a new color in the next layer. The more colors he uses, the longer the process takes.

Because he pulls the prints by hand, there are often obvious variations where the images shifted in the ink application process. “I don’t mind. I think it’s kind of cool,” Bovey said. “That’s the art process.”

The number of prints per edition that Bovey creates depends on two factors: He stops when he runs out of ink or when he runs out of paper. “It’s very organic and random,” Bovey joked.

Perhaps the hardest thing about his job is convincing customers who request a particular print that he has simply run out.

“People think I can just push a button and press print,” Bovey said. “People get mad, but I try to tell them I’m making every single one of these by hand.”

Bovey plans to take his show on the road next spring. He is fixing up a 1978 food truck so he won’t have to haul large boards for displaying his prints anymore. He plans to make the sides of the truck magnetic so he can hang his posters directly onto the outside of the tuck.

“It’ll be like selling prints out of an ice old cream truck,” Bovey said.

Perfect.