Anthony Petrie "Charts" Tops The Charts

Anthony Petrie

The hedge maze from The Shining, constellations that form the heads of Star Wars characters, the blueprints to Nakatomi Tower, all were hanging in Gallery 1988 for the opening of Anthony Petrie "Charts." By the time I got there, an hour into the opening, many pieces depicting some of the favorite films of fans in charts and routes were already sold out. In a nice suit, with a carbon fiber ringer on one hand and a watch on the other, both gifts from his girlfriend, the artist of the show, Anthony Petrie was talking with guests.

Gallery/ pieces still available.

Anthony remembered me from our earlier interview, we only e-mailed, and we started to chat about his opening night experience as it was happening. "Honestly, I was really nervous coming here, because you take a big risk in something like this. Not only work wise, but monetarily, " Anthony said. It had taken him a year to do the show and have all the works ready. "My biggest fear was coming here and being alone in a room with really expensive paper...and I was just like terrified. Like did I waste a huge amount of time and money on something that people are just not going to get at all ?, " he continued. His work selling out and having a packed gallery quelled those fears.

"The Star Wars one was the one that took the longest," Anthony told me. He watched each of the films three times, not just seeing the original trilogy in order, but re-watching the same film three times and having it playing in the background as he made the piece, "The Blue Milky Way." Anthony went, "I know I couldn't f*ck up Star Wars because I would be crucified if I got anything wrong." He heavily researched in forums, the books and bouncing it off friends who were huge fans. "Making sure I didn't put Jar Jar Binks in it, even though I wanted to f*ck with people really bad and put a tiny little Jar Jar in there. No one would have bought the damn thing and I would have been screwed, " Anthony told me as I nearly started to laugh and suggested he sneak Jar Jar in as the entire background.

We walked over to "Metropocalyspe", his piece based on Akira. "So I was recently in Japan, just for inspiration, travel and vacation. And we took the metro everywhere and it was kind of really inspiring and I was looking at something to do Akira with, " Anthony told. This piece took me a few seconds to grasp when I first arrived. When I did, as a huge anime fan, I let out a, "No way."  Anthony said he people watched and overheard critics who just didn't get it, get that it's related to Akira. All the lines in the chart are named after the different characters from the film in Japanese.

We ended by going over his adoration of Jim Lee and how meeting him for the first time didn't go as imagined. Anthony continued talking to guests surrounded by some of his favorite films, though he hates Escape From New York.

Charts, January 9 - 24, 2015 G1988

The one he hated