“Gronk” by Mickey Hart
Opens July 24th, 2025
Opening celebration July 31st from 4:00pm–9:00pm
The Haight Street Art Center will honor music icon and celebrated visual artist Mickey Hart with the opening of a groundbreaking exhibition: Mickey Hart: Art at the Edge of Magic.
The legendary Grateful Dead drummer’s unique and powerful installation- featuring nearly 100 paintings and prints on canvas, paper, plexiglass, metal, drumheads, and cymbals – marks the first show in a San Francisco based museum for the three-time Grammy Award winner.
Art at the Edge of Magic will open July 24th and run through September 21st, and is free to all museum visitors during regular hours. Join us for an epic opening celebration on July 31 from 4:00pm–9:00pm—the evening before Dead & Company kicks off three sold-out shows in Golden Gate Park, honoring the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. Visitors will have the opportunity to purchase a limited-edition show poster, a collaboration between Mickey Hart, Je Noodle, and legendary poster artist Stanley Mouse.
Mickey Hart’s many contributions to popular culture include his 1991 album “Planet Drum” which was #1 on the Billboard World Music chart for 26 weeks and received the inaugural Grammy Award for “Best World Music Album.” The follow up to Planet Drum, 2007’s “Global Drum Project” also received a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album. He has written four books, is a 1994 inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame, and in 2024 he along with his fellow Grateful Dead band members was honored by the Kennedy Center for his lifetime contributions to American culture.
“We could not be more excited to showcase the work of Mickey Hart,” said Kelly Harris, Executive Director of the Haight Street Art Center. “We have always gravitated to art that transforms and transports viewers. Hart’s entire musical career has been devoted to doing just that, while his art of the past several decades has expanded this ethos into the visual realm.”
A fountain of creativity, Hart has produced a trove of unique and exciting artwork.
"I love the flow of things, to be in the moment, to experience magic,” said Hart. “When I paint, I can feel the vibration, I can see it in the colors. It’s vibrational expressionism This mix is exotic and profound in a vibratory and sensual way. I use musical instruments to create and power the paintings out of the vibrations that are formed. When I approach a canvas, it is just like I approach my drums in performance, with an open mind. Life is really all about the rhythm of things. As in my paintings, and as in my music, as in life.”
Though he primarily works with paint, Hart does not describe himself as a painter. Indeed, he uses brushes sparingly, preferring to pour precise mixtures of pure color onto his surfaces. He then exposes his wet, still-evolving images to gravity, centrifugal forces, and intense gamma-wave vibrations—generated by placing each piece on a powerful Meyer Sound subwoofer. This subwoofer transmits the tones of the Beam, a modern version of the Pythagorean monochord originally constructed for the Apocalypse Now sessions and long used in Hart’s iconic “Drums and Space” performances. These vibrations travel through the surface and into the slowly drying paint, shaping the final composition in real time.
This hybrid of artistic intention—choosing colors, deciding how much force to subject his pieces to—and happenstance—paint bubbles and boils unpredictably when subjected to sonic vibrations—is a key tension in Hart’s art.
For his exhibition at the Haight Street Art Center - his largest ever - Hart is showing paintings that are lit from behind alongside pieces on plexiglass rendered in pigments sensitive to blacklight. Two highlights of the exhibition are a pair of large paintings that will be mounted into walls like picture windows so viewers can enjoy both their blacklight and natural-light sides. The exhibition will also include devices Hart uses to create his poured paintings. A musical audio experience will complement the art installation and provide yet another window into the creative genius of the Bay Area legend.
“Just like the Grateful Dead’s music transcends the surface level of rock and roll, my art serves as a vessel for raising consciousness, striving to create a slightly better world,” Hart added.