Tag Archives: greg craola simkins

Arts and Culture

South Park Exhibit at Opera Gallery Ends April 10th!

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Title Unknown by Greg “Craola” Simkins (All Photos By Geoffrey Dicker)

In celebration of  South Park’s 15th anniversary celebration, Comedy Central and pop surrealist painter and street artist, Ron English have joined forces to curate 15 Artists Interpret South Park at New York’s Opera Gallery. The show kicked off on March 28th, but i just had time to get over to the gallery today. You have one more week to see the exhibit before it closes so get yourself over to 115 Spring Street in Soho ASAP!

Ron English (who has several paintings in the exhibit) hand-picked the other 14 artists, who were drawn from the street and the pop surrealism movement to join him in displaying their South Park interpretations. The artists are unified by their love of the hit series and the passion they bring to their work. Their interpretations feature the South Park characters and the iconic moments throughout the series history. The featured artists also include: Travis Louie, Colin Christian, Sas Christian, Beau Stanton, Kid Zoom, Dave White, KaNo, Kathie Olivas, Clark Fox, Greg Craola Simkins, Mark Dean Veca, Lindsey Way, Naoto Hattori and TrustoCorp. Also displaying his work is Mars English, Ron’s young son, who any fan of English‘s art would immediately recognize as the primary model for the majority of his father’s amazing paintings.


Kenny on Fire by Ron English

This summer the 15 Artists Interpret South Park exhibit will be traveling to Comic-Con in San Diego for Comedy Central’s Ultimate South Park Fan Experience. In addition, South Park fans can submit their own artistic interpretations at SouthParkStudios.com until May 15th. Ron English and the South Park staff will select the 15 best pieces and these will also be included in the Ultimate Fan Experience at Comic-Con.


Cartman Kaiju Death by TrustoCorp

Arts and Culture

Alternative Press 25th Anniversary Show At Sloan Fine Art

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Starting today, the Sloan Fine Art Gallery on the lower east side is hosting the Alternative Press 25th Anniversary Art Exhibition for three days only! I realize that all of the indie rock hipsters are busy with CMJ crap this week, but I attended the opening party  last night and can assure you that  this exhibit is definitely worth your time to run over and check it out between your showcases and random pukefests.  For this special exhibition, the gallery’s rear room has been transformed with tons of cool photographs, milestones and memoirs from the Alternative Press archives while the main gallery highlights original artworks from artists/musicians who have been featured in the magazine over the years. It was sweetly nostalgic  for me, looking through everything and remembering way back when Trent Reznor used to get me all hot and bothered and I could stand to listen to a Nine Inch Nails CD for more that 30 seconds. Good times.

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Arts and Culture

Cool Thing of the Day: Cap’n Rotnclaw Vinyl Collectible by Greg Craola Simkins

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Avast Ye Maties!

Surrealist painter Greg “Craola” Simkins is one of my favorite contemporary artists. Since his amazing paintings sell for thousands and thousands of dollars (and deservedly so), the chances of a working gal like me being able to add one of his masterpieces to my modest collection of artsy fartsyness is somewhat slim. Fortunately, Greg has just released this totally cool new vinyl collectible, the Cap’n Rotnclaw – Custom Brine edition. This special edition Cap’n Rotnclaw features a brand new color variant designed by Craola and hand painted in the USA by Dead Presidents Designs. Isn’t he cute? Available in a very limited edition of only 24 pieces (23 now, because I just ordered mine) it doesn’t take much brainpower to figure out that you could very easily own an exclusive Craola work of art for just $74.99. Affordable! Cap’n Rotnclaw is made from PVC vinyl, stands 7-inches tall and arrives in window box packaging for easy display and safe keeping. Click on over to This Link now and throw down before others catch on.

Arts and Culture

Last Rites Gallery Presents Jason D' Aquino and Lead Poisoning Exhibits

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The Dimming Room By Chris Mars

One thing really stands out when I look back on this past weekend: it was an amazing couple of days for checking out rad, edgy new art in New York City. Sometimes an art exhibit is made all the more impactful by the space in which it’s displayed. This is definitely true when it comes to a venue I visited for the first time on Saturday night. If you can remember back to the time, about ten years ago I think it was, when the Limelight nightclub was in full swing and much of the club’s interior resembled something from the most horrific pages of a Clive Barker novel, then you will want to check out an art space called the Last Rites Gallery. Like your darkest, Halloween-meets-Hellraiser nightmares, Last Rites, which is also a tattoo parlor, is a trip in itself before you even get into the gallery space, and really must be experienced to be fully appreciated. People who really know me know that I like dark, fucked up shit, so I just fell in love with the place immediately and will absolutely be returning for future exhibits.

Right now, Last Rites has two cool shows running simultaneously. The first, curated by Jason D’Aquino and entitled Lead Poisoning, is a group show with contributions from over forty artists who work in a black, white and grayscale palette. A few of my favorite artists including Greg “Craola” Simkins, Ron English, Robert Williams and Michael Mararian have pieces in the show. This exhibit definitely fits into the realm of dark art that Last Rites is reputed for. Loved it.

The second exhibit is a solo show by D’Aquino featuring drawings and sketches in his whimsically twisted signature style, executed in graphite on ledger paper and other unorthodox canvases such as actual matchbook cover interiors. D’Aquino’s passion for mixing almost storybook innocence with violent, sexual or otherwise disturbing images reminded me a lot of the amazing work of Mark Ryden. My favorite drawing was one depicting a sailor who has just harpooned a mermaid under the watchful eye of a smiling full moon. Unbelievable! Jason has also made some interesting modifications to Milton Bradley’s classic Operation board game that you will appreciate if you ever owned that game as a child.

Photo By Geoffrey Dicker (Click to Enlarge)

The Brave Words heavy metal news site has a super informative post which will go into a lot more detail about both exhibits than I am going into here, so I suggest you check that out at this link if you have any questions about what you are going to see. But mostly, I would just suggest that you don’t miss these exhibits.

Last Rites Gallery is located at 511 W. 33rd Street, between 10th & 11th Avenues, 3rd floor, New York, NY 10001. Both shows run through July 25th, 2010.