Rediscovering the Art of Todd Trexler

Before the Castro became the epicenter of the modern-day LGBT universe it was an enclave to the super freaky, hippie, try-anything-once, Queer, flower children. Artist Todd Trexler, a San Mateo native and grad of SFSU, found himself at the center of this pool of creative wonder and was soon producing unique and iconic posters for performers like the avant-garde troupe, The Cockettes, disco mega-star Sylvester, and John Water's muses, MInk Stole and the infamous drag personality, Divine, just to name a few. Mr. Trexler's work is enjoying a resurgence of interest after four decades of semi-obscurity as researchers, archivists, and collectors are banging down his studio door again to obtain one of his fantastical pieces of art of a bygone Queer era.

In 1965 the Castro was a quiet neighborhood with inexpensive rents and home primarily to SF descendants of Irish and Swedish immigrants. Among these well-kept Victorians small groups of Queer collectives formed forging the first Queer inroads into the close-knit community. Amongst those ground breaking auteurs Mr. Trexler found himself tapped to illistrate posters for their often psychedelic fueled shows. Hand made, hand drawn with Rapidograph pens the posters caught on with the audiences who soon clamored for more. He used the pointillist technique, drawing clusters and patterns of small dots to form images. These loopy, fine dotted depictions embodied the free thinking/free love era embraced by the thousands of young people flocking to flower powered San Francisco. "I'd just smoke a lot of weed and sit with the pen," Mr. Trexler, 65, recently confessed in a SF Gate interview. "People would know I was doing it and would stop by."

Some of the 'people' were SF legends like North Beach bombshell Carol Doda, Bill Graham collaborator/manager of the Cockettes, Sebastian-who first commissioned Mr. Trexler's work- drag juggernaut Pristine Condition and the infamous collector of Art Deco and show stopping performer John Rothermel who visited Mr. Trexler's Castro street apartment  to gossip, collaborate and get a wee bit stoned. He loved being at the center of all the changes happening in the Castro and meeting all the artistic innovators and experimenters of the era. By the late 70's Todd Trexler's beloved Castro was evolving at an alarming rate. What had been a fun free form, everything goes, Queer mentality was being replaced by a more 'consumerist conformity' he recounted enmeshed with the trappings and rigors of hyper masculinity. He left the neighborhood in 1979 moving to the Peninsula where he later became a nurse and cared for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Mr. Trexler produced about 50 works in total from 1969-1975 of the 11" by 22" posters. Now many of them are available for purchase through his website. Please take a look at the work and catch a glimpse of the Castro as it's rarely remembered now overshadowed by the über macho imaging of the 70's Castro Clone. A brief time as experimentation and imagination ruled, men dressed as women yet were so obviously boys, women donned boy drag, the political merged with art and everyone was doused in generous amounts of color and glitter.