Monday, July 10, 2017

The Top 100 (Remixed)

The Top 100 (Remixed) is a forthcoming exhibition at Tempus Projects in Tampa, Florida from August 4 until September 21, 2017. The exhibition, curated by Jade Dellinger, will feature hundreds of works from my Top 100 Archive. Jade and myself have spent many hours selecting and organizing works found in my studio for inclusion in the exhibit. It was fun to open box after box of old top 100 material and many half forgotten works surfaced in the process. Just yesterday I found in a bow with miscellaneous stuff this lovely portrait of Billy Karren. 
 Billy Karren
6 x 6 inches, oil on wood, c. 2005.
The interesting thing about this portrait is that I didn't know at the time that Billy Karren is a man, not a woman. I thought then that Bikini Kill was an all-girl band and that I was painting one of them. The Top 100 Remixed exhibit will be organized following thematic and topical top 10 lists. I selected this portrait for the Riot Grrrl top 10. Huggy Bear, another favorite Riot Grrrl band, also consists of men and women, so Billy is not the only guy represented in the Riot Grrrl top 10. About gender: The portrait paintings in the exhibit are about equal, where in the early days I painted more men, the last decade has seen more portraits of female musicians. The one top 10 that is strictly male: Men with beards. The portrait of Roky Erickson that I've just completed (see previous post) is part of this select group of outlaws and freaks (David Allan Coe is represented with a big painting here.)

Roky Erickson

 Roky Erickson
16 x 12 inches, oil on canvas paper, 2017
Roger Kynard 'Roky' Erickson turns 70 this weekend. Born in Austin, TX. Roky is a psychedelic cult hero best known as founder of the legendary 60s band 13th Floor Elevators but released, in a second career, between 1977 and 2010, a score of solo albums.  The song You Don't Love Me Yet appears on All That May Do My Rhyme from 1995. The song is clearly much older as Bongwater recorded a cover version of it in the late 1980s.