It’s hard to think of a material more synonymous with teenage rebellion than denim. Jeans have typically been the scrawled-on with markers, worn too tight, flared too wide or rocked too skinny, a raised fist to the establishment.
Perhaps only one other item of clothing better represents the generational divide between parents and children: the black concert T-shirt, ornamented with grim reapers, skulls, buxom women and the names of heavy metal bands.
Marietta-born and now San Francisco-based artist Ben Venom creates artwork out of both denim and the well-worn heavy metal T-shirts that profess allegiance to bands like Iron Maiden, Slayer, Mastodon, Ozzy Osbourne and Megadeth.
In a wry send-up of heavy metal’s fist-pumping, anger-fueled hyper-masculinity, Venom stitches those T-shirts and jeans into quilts. That’s right: quilts, the kind your granny stitched to ornament cozy family bedrooms or to drape on the backs of sofas.
In reality, Venom said, “These quilts will probably scare your grandmother to death.”
Though none are on display in his solo show, “Ben Venom: I Make No Mistakes” at the Westside Get This! Gallery, Venom also makes heavy metal pillows for rockers who want to really get their cuddle on. Venom has found the jeans and T-shirts in his own closet and on eBay. But more recently as his work has grown in stature, he has begun to receive donations from strangers, band members and other heavy metal fans.
His 108 inch-by-60 inch quilt “I Go Where Eagles Dare” features a two-headed griffin with rude projectile tongues, its body composed of small scraps of old heavy metal shirts sewn against a black quilted background. Like all of the artwork in the show, the quilt funnels heavy metal aggression through a time-consuming, precise and meditative craft form. That when-worlds-collide juxtaposition is the very funny crux of Venom’s work.
Another handmade quilt, “Living on the Razors Edge” (63 by 83), takes its title from the lyrics to an Iron Maiden song. The quilt background is crafted from the legs of worn and weathered jeans. With their soft, faded patina, it’s hard not to imagine all of the kids who once wore those jeans. The piece is a tribute to the spirit of youth, but also to the community of music which binds so many disparate people.
Sporting an unruly shock of sandy blond hair, a black concert T-shirt and the low, throaty voice of someone who sounds like he’s spent some time testing the limits of his vocal cords, Venom is a self-professed fan who grew up listening to heavy metal. And he has a fan’s love of the iconography of heavy metal: the skulls, pentagrams, inverted crosses, rams’ heads, teeth-baring wolves and the crudely rendered, tarot-card and horror comic-derived imagery. He’s just found a way to connect with that interest in a more conceptual form.
Venom’s most successful pieces tend to be the larger ones. Their banner-like size suggests enormous declarations of metal love that somehow match the blasting music they reference. Smaller rectangular pieces with snippets of rock lyrics and sleeveless vests ornamented with metal studs — Venom has the shirts embroidered at the same San Francisco shop that creates vests for the Hell’s Angels — further examine his fixation with craft and rock, though they lack the raw power of the more epic quilts.
The inspiration for Venom’s heavy metal quilts was the traveling exhibition of “The Quilts of Gee’s Bend,” made by the descendants of former slaves living in Gee’s Bend, Ala. The decision to take up quilt-making was serendipitous for a young artist; Venom also discovered that the quilts were the perfect low-cost artwork, easily folded up and shipped — or even packed in his bags and stored in the overhead bin — for shows from Berlin to Chapel Hill, N.C.
His work is a clever collision of two very different worlds, one wild, furious and up all night, the other ladylike, domesticated and comfort-driven. Venom takes a craft associated with pattern, order and memorializing and uses it to partly tame the notorious, cacophonous disorder of heavy metal music.
The Bottom Line: Quilts made from heavy metal T-shirts mash up cozy crafting and aggressive rock with real wit.
Art Review
“Ben Venom: I Make No Mistakes”
Through October 6. Noon-5 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; free. Get This! Gallery, 662 11th Street, Atlanta. 678-596-4451, www.getthisgallery.com.
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