When Dave Grohl was asked to create two works of art for a charity auction, he procrastinated so long that he wound up drawing them on the day they were to be exhibited for sale.
The playful results are scrawled with a Sharpie on the back of corrugated signs from the 2023 edition of the annual Sea.Hear.Now festival in Asbury Park, N.J. One features Grohl’s instructions for making a beer bong while the other shows plans for emptying a cassette tape to smuggle hash inside it.
The auctions close on Dec. 27, with the highest initial bids at $6,501 and $5,100 respectively, meaning Grohl – who headlined the festival with the Foo Fighters after drawing his images – is on target to bring in at least $11,600 to be shared among seven good causes.
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“We used to make these diagrams for runners backstage at shows – ‘Go to Home Depot and get this shit.’” Grohl says in the video clip below, while working on his beer bong piece. “They would literally like get it and screw it together before we played.”
Art is collected annually “from musicians who are playing the festival to showcase and sell in our Transparent Clinch Gallery Pop Up Art Tent in order to raise money for local charities,” organizer Danny Clinch wrote on the auction page.
Watch Dave Grohl Drawing His Artworks
Dave Grohl Made Art Before Headlining Festival
Clinch “asked Dave Grohl to create some art,” he added. “Dave was immediately excited about the opportunity and started throwing out some creative ideas. As the festival grew closer, I would text Dave to remind him that we would need to collect the art soon. Being one of the busiest people that I know, he arrived at the festival with a Sharpie and ready to make art.
He said a runner was sent to fetch a suitable canvas and returned with “some ‘Prohibited Items’ corro-board signage from the festival fences. Dave loved this and began creating these one-of-a-kind drawings moments before taking the stage in front of 30,000 people.”
Clinch concluded: “Now that you’ve seen the drawings, it only makes the story and the art more ironic and iconic.” The auction winners will also receive a fine art print of Grohl performing at the festival, shot and signed by Clinch.
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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