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'Monterey' shows many of the music personalities who played at one of rock's most famous festivals.
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Blues from an airplane: The Jefferson Airplane, Aug. 3, 1968. Grace Slick would retire from the music business in 1989.
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by dave smalley
Grace Slick. The very name is iconic--the sultry voice in songs like "White Rabbit," "Somebody to Love" and "We Built This City."
Slick's music career, in bands like Jefferson Airplane or the subsequent Jefferson Starship, or as a solo artist, led to a well-deserved induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and an impressive ranking of No. 20 on VH1's "100 Greatest Women of Rock 'n' Roll."
But Slick--still delightfully outspoken at age 68--has never been the type to rest on her laurels. She retired from music in 1989, at age 50.
As she put it to The Free Lance-Star, "I don't like the way old people look doing rock and roll--I think they look silly. Rap and rock should be young people's stuff."
Still, an artist is an artist, and in her post-music life, Slick began a new career--this time using a paintbrush. And she quickly earned rave reviews as a painter, portraying subjects ranging from white rabbits and Alice in Wonderland to fellow rock icons Jerry Garcia, Jimi Hendrix or Pete Townshend.
She'll be appearing at several galleries in Virginia and Maryland this weekend, all open to the public.
For Slick, the transition from rocker to painter wasn't all that surprising. What mattered was the timing.
"I used to draw," she recalled. But when she finished college, she said, "I went to work [singing]--that's what I was doing.
"Jerry Garcia used to take his paints on the road--I don't do that. Either I'm being a rock and roll person, or I'm painting. I have one child, one house, one car, one job at a time, one man at a time the focus was music, so that's what I did."
Even after the demise of Starship, Slick didn't plan on an official new career as an artist. Instead, during the aftermath of a broken relationship, she did some paintings of animals "to make me happy--just to put 'em around the house so I could look at a polar bear or a raccoon or whatever it was."
An agent working on a biography of Slick happened to see some of the singer's paintings when visiting her house, and suggested she paint some of her peers in the music industry.
At first, Slick was unconvinced.
"I said: 'No, that's way too cute--rock and roll draws rock and roll--aw, isn't that cute?' And [the agent] said 'Just do two of them,' so I said OK."
She's now glad she did--not only because it allowed her to expand her artistic horizons and talents that had lain dormant during her rock career, but because the faces on most of her subjects tell fascinating stories.
"The people that I'm drawing are very interesting people," she said. "Because we didn't have video when my generation was doing that. You didn't have to look like Britney Spears--you had to sing."
People like Garcia or Janis Joplin, she said, "had very interesting faces. It wasn't a bland/blonde thing going on."
Slick is not the only rocker to turn to the easel--Garcia and Joplin also had an inner painter yearning to break free, as do Paul Simenon of The Clash, Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell and more.
Slick isn't surprised.
"It's pretty common, because it's all the same part of the brain," she noted. "If you're artistic, it's the right brain.
"So pretty much, you could probably say Joni Mitchell could also design sets, or write a book, or any of the arts--but you wouldn't want most of us to be your accountant. You wouldn't want most of us to design O-rings for space rockets."
What distinguishes Slick's work is not just the portraits of friends and peers who happen to be beloved by music fans, but a certain sense of whimsey, a strong manipulation of color and light and an ability to convey mood.
Still, the fact that she doesn't shy away from her musical roots in many works is an undeniable strength.
In one painting, for instance--"Monterey"--icons of the '60's music festival stand around to the side of a stage, each engaged in a different activity.
The facial expressions, the different individual scenes going on, and the general aura created by Slick is something even a photograph couldn't catch. After all, she was there on the sides of those stages. She knew and understood the moment as well, or better, than anyone.
While many of her pieces create a happy or at least thoughtful aura for the viewer, some of the works are equally capable of invoking melancholy and a sense of loss.
"Blue Nude," for instance, is a serigraph of a nude woman, seen from behind, sitting on the ground, arms wrapped around her torso, head down.
As with most things, Slick has an interesting story to tell about some of these decidedly different moods in her art.
"I had received a letter from my daughter, and she was [angry] at me for some reason, and I was sad. And I thought: 'OK, I'm going to go get some wine and get drunk.' But L.A. [where the artist lives] can get pretty warm, so I had no clothes on. And I thought 'Aw [shoot], I'd have to get dressed, find my driver's license, and knowing my personality--I'd already had a bottle of wine--I'd get arrested, tell some cop to [get lost], and then I'd be in jail.
"So I thought: OK, I'll just draw myself being miserable. So I did a whole bunch of pencil sketches and those sell like crazy!
"I was just trying to keep from buying more wine."
What: Grace Slick, appearing at galleries with her latest art collection. Where: Friday, Feb. 8: Wentworth Gallery, White Flint mall, 11301 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda, from 6- Cost: Free Info: Wentworth Gallery at White Flint: 301/816-7974; Wentworth at Pentagon City: 703/415-1166; Wentworth at Tyson's:
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